As Americans geared up for World War II in the early 1940s, President Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR) called upon the nation to increase its production of airplanes. But in a 1940 speech to Congress, FDR said: “I should like to see this Nation geared up to the ability to turn out at least 50,000 planes a year.” At the time, nobody thought FDR’s goal was possible.

At the time, Americans were producing fewer than 1,000 planes per year. The Nazis had 7 million soldiers, but America had less than 200,000. American industry responded with passionate intensity. Ford Motors had never built an airplane, but America sought to produce more airplanes at Willow Run than Hitler produced in all of Germany. To build the plant, builders moved 650,000 cubic yards of dirt and laid 58 miles of grain tile underground. Production exceeded expectations. Ford Liberator bombers took flight in the spring of 1942, ahead of schedule. Within five years, Ford produced tens of thousands of airplanes per year. War production board chief Donald Nelson captured the ambition of the moment: “When we are talking about America’s war production job we are discussing the biggest job in all of history.” Today, these bold visions would be ignored and dismissed as lunacy

To reach the moon, America’s pioneers traveled across 240,000 miles, about fifty-eight times the distance Columbus sailed when he discovered the Western world. As the Apollo rockets pierced through the stratosphere, and navigated the pin-drop silence of outer space, they inspired people back on earth to expand their horizons.