AP Photo

Fifty years ago today, a dashing young American president visited Rice University, in Houston, TX, and spoke words that reflected the optimism and can-do spirit that had defined his nation since its founding. Explaining his call of a year earlier that the United States achieve the goal of “landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the earth” by the end of the decade, President Kennedy mused, “But why, some say, the moon? Why choose this as our goal? And they may well ask why climb the highest mountain. Why, 35 years ago, fly the Atlantic? Why does Rice play Texas? “We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and...