One of today’s contestants in the Name the #Artemis Moonikin Challenge is a reference to someone who opened the door for people of color in the space program. In 1951, after graduating from Tuskegee Institute, Julius Montgomery enlisted in the United States Air Force. After four and a half years of service and a job as a radio station engineer, Montgomery was hired for a position as an electronics technician at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. His starting salary was $96 per week. NASA was established in 1958; before that, much of the research and development that laid the groundwork for the U.S. space program was performed at military installations like Cape Canaveral. Montgomery was a part of a team that did repair work on malfunctioning ballistic missiles at Cape Canaveral. After test missiles were fired, these technicians, called “range rats,” would travel across the testing range to the wreckage site, examine the missile wreckage, figure out what went wrong, and then...