Trump, like Nixon, is Using Space to Look Great. Again.

1968 was not a good year for America. The decade had seen legislation to end racial injustice signed into law and protests against the slow pace of change. On April 4, Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in Memphis, sparking a new wave of protests. Americans were also growing increasingly opposed to the ongoing war in Vietnam, which led to more protests. 1968 was also an election year, and as the presidential race began to build momentum, Democratic hopeful Robert Kennedy was assassinated. It was ultimately Richard Nixon, running on a campaign promise of restoring law and order to the United States, who won the election by a wide margin in November. America was in pain and desperate for change.

Houston marchers in the days following the assassination of Martin Luther King. Photo printed in the Houston Post, April 7, 1968. Photo by Jerry Click. And that’s Buzz Aldrin in front of the woman in the striped dress… yeah, I’ve spent a lot of time identifying astronauts in candid training pictures!

Against this backdrop, on December 21, Apollo 8 launched. Three days later, the three-man crew became the first humans to orbit the Moon.

The mission was a significant step for NASA on its path towards the lunar landing goal. Perhaps more poignantly, the mission gave the world Earthrise. A view of our shared planet from a quarter of a million miles away. It was a glimmer of hope and humanity. The world paused, briefly united by the feat of human ingenuity. Telegrams poured into the White House and the space agency. One from Ho Chi Minh, the leader of Vietnam, reached President Lyndon Johnson via France. “Ho Chi Mihn vous remercie…