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On July 20th, 1969, Neil Armstrong stepped onto the surface of the moon.

The Apollo program—400,000 scientists, engineers, mathematicians, and visionaries—accomplished something most people only dreamed of.

With committed public investment, brilliant minds, and sheer American audacity, big things are possible.

I think about Apollo a lot. Call it my Roman Empire (I think that’s what the kids are saying these days).

But as a scientist who has spent his career arguing that the government can, and should, drive innovation to solve hard problems, the moon landing is basically my north star.

People forget Apollo wasn't inevitable. In 1961, when President Kennedy promised we’d land on the moon before the end of the decade, we had spent a total of 15 minutes in space.

The rocket that would eventually carry three men to the moon hadn't been designed yet. The material science needed to build the heat shield that would bring them home didn't exist yet. Half the physics problems hadn't been solved yet.

And we did it anyway. Because we decided to. Because we funded it, staffed it, believed in it, and refused to stop.

I'm telling you this because I spend a lot of time these days being asked some version of the same question:

Is a fresh start really possible? Can we actually fix this?

The climate. The corruption. The House. The Republic. All of it.

The scientist in me says yes. That the answer is grounded in data and history and this country’s extraordinary capacity to believe. Not easily. Not automatically. But yes.

If we could put a man on the moon, we can build a clean energy economy.

If we could put a man on the moon, we can root out the corruption rotting this government from the inside out.

If we could put a man on the moon, we can flip the House.

We have four months to flip three seats. I've done the math. I like our odds.

The Apollo program was only possible because of the hundreds of thousands of engineers and mathematicians and seamstresses who sewed the spacesuits by hand and the flight controllers who stayed at their consoles through the night.

They each did their part to change history. Will you do yours? One small donation. One giant leap for democracy. [[link removed]]

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We have always been a country capable of impossible things. Don't let anybody tell you otherwise.

Ad astra,
Sean Casten
PAID FOR BY CASTEN FOR CONGRESS
Casten for Congress
P.O. Box 132
Downers Grove, IL 60515-0132
United States
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