"[What they saw on the radar] was not a spaceship from another planet, just another time. A long-since abandoned Soviet satellite, one of its booster rockets didn't fire and it couldn't escape Earth's orbit... a sad reminder of a time when two powerful nations challenged each other... and then boldly raced into outer space.

What will be the next thing that challenges us ...?

...that makes us go farther and work harder?

Do you know that when smallpox was eradicated it was considered the greatest single humanitarian achievement of the century?

Surely we can do it again... as we did in a time when our eyes looked towards the heavens, and with our stretched fingers... we touched the face of God."

Jed Bartlet, in Episode 5, Season 1, "The Crackpots and These Women".