“The story of the human race,” psychologist Abraham Maslow wrote in 1933, “is the story of men and women selling themselves short.”13 If Kennedy were following this mindset, his speech would have been very different (and far more boring). “We choose,” he might have said, “to put humans in Earth orbit and make them circle round and round—not because it’s challenging—but because it’s doable given what we have.” (Which, incidentally, is exactly what NASA decided to do in the 1980s. More on that later.)
