President Kennedy understood the need to counter America’s enemies without precipitating WWIII.

What may come as a surprise to those of us who have learned about the great victory of America winning the space race is that the race was won amid critical bombardment about the money being spent and the rationale behind space exploration.

Apologists of outer space exploration tout their collective efforts as the supreme manifestation of human rationality: peaceful, non-partisan, inoffensive, and humanistic. But the historical reality is that its institutional origins are largely irrational.