America's space programs face many challenges in 2006. The toughest battles will almost certainly be fought over funding. The question will be asked: in a world in turmoil, with a war on terror, amidst rebuilding our hurricane-stricken southeastern shores – how can we afford our space programs?

The answer is, that it is precisely in such times that we need our space programs the most.

Come with me back to 1968 – one of the darkest years in the history of the Republic – and to the flight of Apollo 8, which was expertly chronicled both by the PBS Documentary Race to the Moon and the Tom Hanks HBO series From the Earth to the Moon.

Without minimizing the very real challenges we will face in 2006, consider, if you will, some of the chronology of 1968:

January 10 – The 10,000th U.S. airplane is lost over Vietnam.

January 23 – North Korean patrol boats capture a U.S. Navy reconnaissance vessel, the USS Pueblo. The crisis will drag for 11 months before the crew is
finally freed.

January 31 – North Vietnam unleashes 70,000 troops in launching the Tet offensive. The U.S. Embassy in Saigon is invaded and briefly held, and some of the most brutal and inhumane action of the Vietnam War is unleashed.

February 18 – The U.S. State Department announces the highest one-week casualty toll of the war – 543 dead and 2,547 wounded.

April 4 – One of the most magnificent moments of the Apollo program is virtually lost to history. Apollo 6, the second unmanned test flight of the giant Saturn V Moon rocket, launches successfully. But on this day, Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. is gunned down at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis. The assassination sparks rioting across the country, leaving 46 dead.

June 5 – At 12:13 a.m., following the night of the California Primary Elections, Robert F. Kennedy is shot by Sirhan Sirhan. "Bobbie" Kennedy dies early
on June 6.

August 20 – The Soviet Union invades Czechoslovakia with more than 200,000 troops, ending the "Prague Spring" and beginning a period of enforced oppression.

August 28 – Chicago police, by most accounts without provocation, take violent action against crowds of demonstrators at the Democratic National Convention. At least 100 protestors are treated in emergency rooms and 175 are arrested.

By the autumn of 1968, the U.S. was troubled at home, troubled in Southeast Asia, troubled in Europe – and then came the stunning news that the Soviet Union had successfully sent unmanned Zond spacecraft around the Moon (although not into lunar orbit) in September and November and had brought them back to Earth. On top of everything else, it now seemed that we were about to lose the space race.

Weeks earlier, however, armed with intelligence reports on the upcoming Zond missions (and realizing its first Lunar Module was not going to be ready as planned), NASA boldly revised its mission line up and targeted Apollo 8 for the Moon. Apollo 7 flew successfully in October, achieving "system shake down" objectives in Earth orbit.

And so it was that just two months after the Soviet Zond triumph, on Dec. 21, 1968, astronauts Frank Borman, Jim Lovell and Bill Anders were launched from Florida's Pad 39-A – from the Earth, to the Moon. Not only did this mission have a crew, and not only would it carry the first humans to reach the Moon – it would orbit the Moon 10 times during 20 hours before returning the crew safely to Earth.

In a pause from the unrelenting hopelessness of that bleak year, virtually the entire planet paused to look up.

The mission was filled with tension and human drama, especially as Apollo 8 disappeared around the back side of the Moon. To achieve lunar orbit, a critical rocket motor firing had to be executed perfectly – while the spacecraft and crew were out of contact with mission controllers for an excruciating nine hours. Only if contact were re-established at the end of this vigil would the world know that the first humans to reach the Moon were safe.

Everything worked flawlessly. As Apollo 8 orbited to within 60 miles of the lunar surface, humans circling the Moon spoke to the people of planet Earth – describing the incredible beauty of the planet we all share. For the first time, Earthlings were shown images of their Home Planet as it truly exists – a tiny, blue marble of life in the infinite blackness of space. In an unprecedented gesture of peace, Borman, Lovell and Anderson radioed, from the Moon, Christmas greetings of peace to "All the people of the Good Earth" – reading from the book of Genesis while televising images of the lunar surface below. After capturing countless photographs of the Earth and the Moon, and making invaluable observations of the lunar surface for future crews, Apollo 8 returned safely to Earth – splashing down in the Pacific Ocean on December 27.

Afterward, Frank Borman would recall: "We got millions of telegrams after we landed, but the one I remember most was 'Congratulations to the crew of
Apollo 8. You saved 1968.' We didn't save it [ourselves] – but a lot of the people who made Apollo 8 work saved it."

This is the power of the space program – the power to lift a nation, the power to cause the world to look up. And this is my New Year's wish for all of us: To dream, to dare greatly, and, like Apollo 8, to boldly go where no one has gone before.