The streets were on fire as National Guard troops moved into cities across the United States. The cries were full of anger and sadness. We’re sick of it! protesters shouted. There was talk of radical agitators. Reports of violence and numbers of arrests were rising across the country. The president and his top aides made martial statements about law and order. On television, news and images of unrest seemed to play almost continuously. The voice from the U.S. space agency’s mission control center was cool and calm as a rocket flew into the sky and toward space. It was the late 1960s, it is also right now. For Americans over the age of 60, it is impossible to ignore the similarities between the past few days and unsettling times in the 1960s, especially 1968.