Over the weekend, SpaceX flew two astronauts to the International Space Station on NASA's behalf, a first in spaceflight history. NASA officials have spent months hyping the mission as a bright spot in dark times, and pointed to other milestones still to come: Under President Donald Trump, the United States is working to send Americans to the moon again in less than four years.
And while history might not necessarily repeat, it does rhyme. On the day of the SpaceX launch, Vice President Mike Pence touched on these parallels. The Apollo missions, he said, were "a symbol of national strength and unity" that "rose above the tumult and the clamor of their times."
But the image of a nation united in the common purpose of delivering its people to the heavens is a false memory. Even before the recent demonstrations began, the SpaceX launch wasn't going to be the center of national attention. That message of unity felt discordant when the biggest story in the country was a pandemic killing thousands of Americans every week, many of them black and Latino Americans, under the watch of a government unequipped to handle the virus. The dissonance has grown even more apparent as protests have sprung up in all 50 states.
Space travel has inspired Americans, but it has never united them-not in the late '60s, and certainly not in the present moment. The feats of America's space program, then and now, are a momentary diversion, not a national salve.
[...] In 1968, as the U.S. was rocked by the worst of the Vietnam War, political assassinations, and police brutality against black people, NASA was trying to go to the moon. In 2020, as the country grapples with a deadly pandemic, the worst unemployment crisis since the Great Depression, and police brutality against black Americans, NASA is, once again, trying to go to the moon.
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