He pondered: "Would it be better to put all of this thought, energy, and money to improving conditions here on Earth?"
Despite his internal conflict, Rockwell honored the human effort behind the machinery.
His painting Apollo and Beyond (Apollo 11 Space Team) depicted engineers, backup astronauts, and wives gazing upward alongside the main crew.
Visions of Cosmic Power and Abstract Landscapes
Artist Alma Thomas found inspiration by watching rocket launches on television.
The exhibition quotes her: "The phenomenal changes of the 20th-century machine and space age … set my creativity in motion."
Her 1970 artwork, Launch Pad, used vibrant vertical lines to capture the gantry structure at the Kennedy Space Center.
Her 1974 painting, Astronauts' Glimpse of the Earth, reinterpreted the famous 1972 "blue marble" photograph through intricate dashes of color.
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The gallery also showcases pieces from the dawn of the commercial jet age.
Georgia O'Keeffe's abstract painting Blue A (1959) was inspired by looking down at rivers from a plane window and later became the museum's grand opening poster in 1976.
Catherine Stewart's 2020 fabric creation, Katherine Johnson Dress, pays tribute to the Black mathematician whose orbital calculations were vital to NASA.
The garment is covered in celestial coordinates and equations.
Surrealist artists were also captivated by lunar missions. Man Ray interpreted the first moon landing through a chaotic vortex of scribbles.
Russo commented: "If you think about it, when we first landed on the moon and that emotional storm, it looks like the vortex of a tornado.
