https://thenextweb.com/syndication/2020/06/28/space-exploration-is-expensive-but-its-worth-the-price/

I am one of the few African-American aerospace engineers who helped design the Apollo spaceships that took men to the Moon. My great-grandfather was a slave in Claiborne, Alabama, who used primitive tools to work the land. My father was born in Alabama before the Wright brothers made mankind’s first flight. He lived to see men walk on the Moon, twin robotic biology labs land on Mars, and a fleet of four space probes on their way to the stars. But many black people, like the late Reverend Ralph Abernathy, felt that the money used to make these amazing things happen would have been better spent on helping the poorest descendants of American slaves.

In July 1969, when Apollo 11 took off from the east coast of Florida, I was in the VIP viewing area, 2.8 miles away from the launch pad. It was overwhelming. I yelled: ‘Wait for me!’ Others watching nearby, including the Ethiopian emperor Haile Selassie, responded similarly. Even Abernathy, many more miles away, was overcome with a sense of awe, forgetting momentarily his protest on behalf of the hungry.