By John A. Tures
What Lessons Can JFK’s Pledge to Reach the Moon Provide for Trump?
As we approach the 50th anniversary of the U.S. moon landing, we’re not only going to reminisce about one of humanity’s greatest achievements, but also wonder when we’re ever going to go back, or go beyond the moon to Mars, and perhaps further into space.
在离美国登月50周年纪念日越来越近之际，我们不仅要追忆这一属于全人类历史上最伟大的成就之一，也要继而展望我们是否能重回月球，或者超越月球去探索火星，甚或去到更遥远的宇宙。
President Donald Trump has shown that he is very eager to relaunch the U.S. space program, and reach those goals. But so were the politicians of the 1950s and 1960s, and they faced similar seemingly insurmountable odds of pulling it off.
特朗普总统曾对重新启动美国空间计划和达成相关目标展示出他的热情。
但是这种热情和1950-1960年代的政治家们没什么不同，而且他们的计划所面临的阻碍也同样看似不可逾越。
Here are several lessons Trump can get from one of his predecessors: President John F. Kennedy.
特朗普可以从他的前辈、约翰·菲茨杰拉德·肯尼迪总统那里学到一些经验。
Provide the American People With a Good Reason to Go
给美国人民一个好的理由
Believe it or not, when Kennedy was in the Senate, he wasn’t as pro-space as one might think. That all changed when Sputnik was launched. Suddenly, the Massachusetts senator went on the attack, concerned that this would lead to a “missile gap” with our enemy, the Soviet Union. Our space failures during the 1950s put noted anti-Communist Richard Nixon on the defensive, helping JFK secure a narrow victory in 1960.
不论你相信与否，当肯尼迪还在参议院时，他并不像人们所想的一样热衷于探索宇宙。
而当苏联抢先一步人造卫星发射以后，他的态度就完全变了。
这位马萨诸塞州的参议员马上发起攻势，担心美国在导弹方面的发展会被敌人苏联甩开距离。
美国在1950年代的空间计划的失败使得共和党的著名反共人士理查德·尼克松饱受批评，并且使他在1960年的总统大选中以微弱的差距输给了肯尼迪。
As he stated on the campaign trail: “I have premised my campaign for the presidency on the single assumption that the American people are uneasy at the present drift in our national course, that they are disturbed by the relative decline in our vitality and prestige, and that they have the will and the strength to start the United States moving again.”
肯尼迪在竞选演说中说到：
“我将我的总统竞选成功的唯一前提设立在美国人民对目前国家偏离航道情形的不安心情之上。
他们为国家的活力和声望的衰减而苦恼，并且他们有意愿和能力让美国再次出发。
”
If Donald Trump wants to get the country energized about returning to space, by wide margins, he’s got to find a strong rationale. It was more than just the prestige of being first that motived JFK and Americans in the 1960s. It was ensuring peace and security. Just saying, “we want to beat China and Russia in space” alone will not work. Kennedy was able to tie space to the new generation of weapons poised to strike Americans the way that Nazis peppered London with V2 rockets. Trump must make the concern and need tangible.
如果特朗普想要这个国家的人普遍对重回宇宙再次燃起激情，他需要找到一个强有力的论据。
1960年代激励肯尼迪和美国人民的可不仅仅是美国的声望这么简单，而是为了保障和平与安全。
所以，如果只是说“我们想要在宇宙空间中打败中国和俄罗斯”并不会起作用。
肯尼迪当年成功地将空间计划与瞄准美国的新一代武器联系起来，暗示美国也可能经历伦敦被纳粹V2火箭密集轰炸的遭遇。
所以，特朗普也有必要将空间计划的关切和需求实质化。
Perhaps fear of a foreign foe may not do the trick this time. A more plausible concern might be the power we need to get there. Promising that the race to the moon and Mars will unleash an energy revolution, providing accessible fuel for the future, will motivate Americans, concerned that our nonrenewable sources won’t always be able to provide the American economy with the juice it needs. And I can see Trump getting behind such an initiative.
煽动对敌对国家的恐惧之情恐怕不会再次获得成功。
更使人信服的办法或许是强调重启太空计划所需要的能源。
允诺一个奔向月球和火星的计划或可释放出一场能源革命，为未来提供触手可及的能源会激励美国人民，因为他们担心不可再生性能源并不能总是给经济提供充足的养分。
我可以预见到特朗普会支持这一类的倡议。
A Big Name for Big Plans
大计划的响亮名称
Throughout American history, certain presidents have been able to rally many to their side by an effective label that could sum up their vision and a host of connected programs. From William McKinley’s “Full Dinner Pail” and Teddy Roosevelt’s “Square Deal” to Franklin D. Roosevelt’s “New Deal” and Harry Truman’s “Fair Deal,” these presidents were able to accomplish more than, let’s say, Grover Cleveland, Calvin Coolidge, George H. W. Bush or Gerald Ford, who may have been good men but lacked that ability to transmit their ideas and policies to the American people.
在美国的历史上，某几个总统有能力用一个有力的标签将自己的愿景和一系列相关连的计划总结承述出来，以此将大众团结到他们身边。
从威廉·麦金莱的“满满的饭桶”和泰迪·罗斯福的“公平交易”到富兰克林·罗斯福的“新政”以及哈利·杜鲁门的“公平政策”，这些总统取得了比之另几位更大的成就，比如说格洛弗·克利夫兰，卡尔文·柯立芝，老布什和杰拉尔德·福特等。
这几位总统都是好人，但是却缺乏了将自己的政见和政策传输给美国人民的能力。
John F. Kennedy had one of the most successful labels in history, “the New Frontier,” which not only encapsulated his space vision, but could also be applied to a variety of discoveries and connected to the American ethos of opportunity, risk-taking, hard work, sacrifice, being proud of achievements and the chance for rewards from such accomplishments (from our taming the frontier with rugged and risky determination).
约翰·肯尼迪创造了历史上最为成功的标签，即“新疆界”。
这个词不仅仅浓缩了其空间计划的精髓，还能够应用于各种各样的发现发明，且和美国人喜欢机遇、冒险、勤勉、牺牲，以及对取得成就的自豪感和能因为取得成就而获得回馈（以粗旷并且高风险的决断力来征服新疆界）的民族精神产生联系。
As Kennedy stated on July 15, 1960: “But the New Frontier of which I speak is not a set of promises—it is a set of challenges. It sums up not what I intend to offer the American people, but what I intend to ask of them. It appeals to their pride, not to their pocketbook—it holds out the promise of more sacrifice instead of more security.”
就像肯尼迪在1960年7月15日陈述的一样：
“新疆界并不是我所作出的一系列承诺－它是一系列的挑战。
它概括出的不是那些我想带给美国人民的事物，而是我想要向他们所提出的要求。
它将会吸引的是人们的自豪感，而不是他们的钱包，它所给出的承诺是更多的牺牲，而不是更多的安全感。
”
Trump should subsume this link of abstract imagination and concrete initiatives to achieve his space goals. Something like “Future Venture” or “Modern Mission” would make a good name. Its programs would focus on the energy to get there, a policy to capture and share the scientific knowledge and lessons developed from the process, and perhaps a plan to make it a joint private-public sharing that could be applied to so many other sectors: military, economy, infrastructure and politics, which fits with the American support for free enterprise and demand for good accountable government.
特朗普应该升华这些抽象的想象和坚实的倡议来成就他的空间计划。
比如“未来探险”和“现代使命”都会是不错的标签名字。
计划将把着眼点放在到达宇宙所需要的能源，发掘和共享达成这一计划过程中所衍生的科学知识和经验的相关政策，或者有可能是一项可以广泛运用于公私领域的计划，比如军事领域，经济领域，基础设施建造领域甚至是政治领域，这些领域的发展契合着美国民众对自由企业的支持以及对负责政府的要求。
Such a Flight Must Be Led by Our Best
空间飞行需举国之力
President Dwight D. Eisenhower was not a fan of manned spaceflight. Many of Kennedy’s advisors were against it. These groups claimed that we would learn plenty from flights in space, which could reach the moon, and collect data. But the amount of time and effort needed to keep an astronaut alive in space would take away from the mission, and the costs in potential casualties from our dangerous efforts wouldn’t be worth any possible benefits, they argued.
德怀特·艾森豪威尔总统对载人空间飞行并不热衷。
肯尼迪的一众顾问也对此持反对态度。
他们认为美国将从空间飞行中获益良多，比如可以从登月中获取数据。
但他们也争辩到，保持宇航员的生存需要耗费大量时间和努力，而且一旦造成人员伤亡，那损失将是任何收益都无法弥补的。
President Kennedy disagreed. He found that man was “the most extraordinary computer of them all…[whose] judgment, nerve, and… [ability to] learn from experience still make him unique.”
但总统肯尼迪不这么认为。
他发现人是“最为超凡的计算机，人类的判断，勇气以及从经验中学习的能力仍然使得人类独一无二。
”
Such astronauts would be heroes, as would be the mission control experts, scientists and everyone in government and/or the private sector who put them there. We should utilize our best, and not prejudge who could be those people by gender, race, ethnicity or anything about who the people are, focusing instead on what they can do.
这些宇航员会成为英雄，就像统筹这些任务的专家和科学家们，以及在政府和私人领域把宇航员送入太空的那些人们一样。
我们应该充分利用我们的最佳资源，而不是预设这些英雄是谁，例如他们的性别，种族，宗教信仰或者任何属性，相比于关注他们是谁，我们更应该关注他们的成绩。
“I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the earth,” Kennedy told Congress on May 25, 1961.
“我坚信我们的国家应该在这十年期内，将自己投身于将人类送上月球并且安然重返地球的目标之中。
”肯尼迪在1961年5月25日对美国国会这么说到。
Kennedy made a point of setting a target date, but one that could realistically be met. As those in the space program have pointed out, it had to be a certain time for expectations (several decades would be too long), but realistic enough so that an unachievable time frame would not lead to cynicism that would dry up public support. Witness President George W. Bush’s promise to go to the moon and Mars in the 2000s, which fell flat, never seriously backed up, even by the president himself.
肯尼迪为计划设立了一个可实现的目标时间，这是强有力的一点。
就如在此宇宙计划中的人士所指出的一样，这一目标时间需要满足人们的期望（几十年的时间就会过长），但又要是可以实现的目标，这样就不会招致冷嘲热议从而消磨掉公众的支持度。
好比小布什总统承诺在2000年登陆月球和火星的计划不仅失败，也从没有得到人们认真严肃的支援，甚至他本人也没当回事。
Kennedy’s goal kept in mind that he might not be in office when the event eventually took place. Yet he’s the U.S. president most associated with the moon landing, not Eisenhower, Johnson or Nixon. Trump should recognize that Mars will likely be out of reach by 2024, barring a miracle, but other goals can be achieved, or put into motion, within a satisfactory date.
肯尼迪的目标使得这项计划得以实施之时，即便他本人已经不在任期，仍被大众
所牢记。
他是美国总统中与登月成功最常被联系在一起的那一位，不是艾森豪威尔，也不是约翰逊或者尼克松。
特朗普应该知道，就算他能当总统到2024年，美国也不可能在他任期内登上火星，除非有奇迹发生。
但是他还可以设立其他能达成的目标，或者至少在他任期内开始行动。
The Benefits of Overcoming a Big Challenge
克服挑战所能带来的收益
It will be a challenge for our president. But Kennedy knew that it would be the same for his era, as he put forth this argument for a Houston crowd at Rice Stadium: “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 measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win.”
这对总统来说将是一项挑战。
但肯尼迪当时也知道这是一项挑战，就像他在莱斯球场对休士顿市民所说的那样：
“但是有些人问为什么是月球？
为什么选择登月作为我们的目标呢？
那么他们也有可能会问为什么要攀登最高的山峰，为什么35年以前要飞越大西洋，为什么莱斯大学要挑战德克萨斯大学？
登月是我们所做出的选择。
我们选择在这一个十年进行登月和将其他所做出的选择付诸实践，不是因为它们容易，而是因为他们困难，因为这一目标会助力我们组织和量度我们所拥有的最好的能源和技术，因为这是我们愿意接受的、不愿意推迟的、并且想要取得胜利的挑战。
”
Let’s see if Trump can win space back for the U.S., the way JFK did so many years ago.
特朗普能否为美国重新赢回宇宙空间，就像肯尼迪在多年以前做到的一样，就让我们拭目以待。
