President John F. Kennedy at Rice University
to inspire Americans to support NASA's mission to the moon on September 12,
1962
‘’We choose to go to the Moon’’ speech by President John Kennedy on September 12, 1962, at the Rice University Stadium in Houston, Texas was the pivotal force that led to the successful Apollo 11 mission to the moon.
The Soviet Union had successfully launched
the first artificial satellite, Sputnik 1, almost four years earlier. The Sputnik
1 spacecraft was the first artificial satellite successfully placed in orbit
around the Earth. Many Americans perceived that the United States was losing
the Space Race with the Soviet Union.
Kennedy's goal was realised posthumously on July 20, 1969, when the United States landed humans on the moon for the first time in history.
Heraldviews revisits the event of that day that changed the face of space exploration.
THE SPEECH
President Pitzer, Mr. Vice President,
Governor, Congressman Thomas, Senator Wiley, and Congressman Miller, Mr. Webb.
Mr. Bell, scientists, distinguished guests, and ladies and gentlemen:
I appreciate your president having made me an
honorary visiting professor, and I will assure you that my first lecture will
be very brief. I am delighted to be here and I'm particularly delighted to be
here on this occasion.
We meet at a college noted for knowledge, in
a city noted for progress, in a State noted for strength, and we stand in need
of all three, for we meet in an hour of change and challenge, in a decade of
hope and fear, in an age of both knowledge and ignorance. The greater our
knowledge increases, the greater our ignorance unfolds.
Despite the striking fact that most of the
scientists that the world has ever known are alive and working today, despite
the fact that this Nation's own scientific manpower is doubling every 12 years
in a rate of growth more than three times that of our population as a whole,
despite that, the vast stretches of the unknown and the unanswered and the
unfinished still far out-strip our collective comprehension.
No man can fully grasp how far and how fast
we have come, but condense, if you will, the 50,000 years of man's recorded
history in a time span of but a half-century. Stated in these terms, we know
very little about the first 40 years, except at the end of them advanced man
had learned to use the skins of animals to cover them. Then about 10 years ago,
under this standard, man emerged from his caves to construct other kinds of
shelter. Only 5 years ago man learned to write and use a cart with wheels.
Christianity began less than 2 years ago. The printing press came this year,
and then less than 2 months ago, during this whole 50-year span of human
history, the steam engine provided a new source of power.
Newton explored the meaning of gravity. Last
month electric lights and telephones and automobiles and airplanes became
available. Only last week did we develop penicillin and television and nuclear
power, and now if America's new spacecraft succeeds in reaching Venus, we will
have literally reached the stars before midnight tonight.
This is a breathtaking pace, and such a pace
cannot help but create new ills as it dispels old, new ignorance, new problems,
new dangers. Surely the opening vistas of space promise high costs and
hardships, as well as high reward.
So it is not surprising that some would have
us stay where we are a little longer to rest, to wait. But this city of
Houston, this State of Texas, this country of the United States was not built
by those who waited and rested and wished to look behind them. This country was
conquered by those who moved forward-and so will space.
William Bradford, speaking in 1630 of the
founding of the Plymouth Bay Colony, said that all great and honorable actions
are accompanied with great difficulties, and both must be enterprised and
overcome with answerable courage.
If this capsule history of our progress
teaches us anything, it is that man, in his quest for knowledge and progress,
is determined and cannot be deterred. The exploration of space will go ahead,
whether we join in it or not, and it is one of the great adventures of all
time, and no nation which expects to be the leader of other nations can expect
to stay behind in this race for space.
Those who came before us made certain that
this country rode the first waves of the industrial revolutions, the first
waves of modern invention, and the first wave of nuclear power, and this
generation does not intend to founder in the backwash of the coming age of
space. We mean to be a part of it - we mean to lead it. For the eyes of the
world now look into space, to the moon and to the planets beyond, and we have
vowed that we shall not see it governed by a hostile flag of conquest, but by a
banner of freedom and peace. We have vowed that we shall not see space filled
with weapons of mass destruction, but with instruments of knowledge and
understanding.
Yet the vows of this Nation can only be
fulfilled if we in this Nation are first, and, therefore, we intend to be
first. In short, our leadership in science and in industry, our hopes for peace
and security, our obligations to ourselves as well as others, all require us to
make this effort, to solve these mysteries, to solve them for the good of all
men, and to become the world's leading space-faring nation.
We set sail on this new sea because there is
new knowledge to be gained, and new rights to be won, and they must be won and
used for the progress of all people. For space science, like nuclear science
and all technology, has no conscience of its own. Whether it will become a force
for good or ill depends on man, and only if the United States occupies a
position of pre-eminence can we help decide whether this new ocean will be a
sea of peace or a new terrifying theater of war.
I do not say that we should or will go
unprotected against the hostile misuse of space any more than we go unprotected
against the hostile use of land or sea, but I do say that space can be explored
and mastered without feeding the fires of war, without repeating the mistakes
that man has made in extending his writ around this globe of ours.
There is no strife, no prejudice, no national
conflict in outer space as yet. Its hazards are hostile to us all. Its conquest
deserves the best of all mankind, and its opportunity for peaceful cooperation
may never come again. But why, some say, the moon? Why choose this as our goal?
And they may well ask why climb the highest mountain. Why, 35 years ago, fly
the Atlantic? Why does Rice play Texas?
We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go
to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy,
but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure
the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are
willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to
win, and the others, too.
It is for these reasons that I regard the
decision last year to shift our efforts in space from low to high gear as among
the most important decisions that will be made during my incumbency in the
Office of the Presidency.
In the last 24 hours we have seen facilities
now being created for the greatest and most complex exploration in man's
history. We have felt the ground shake and the air shattered by the testing of
a Saturn C-1 booster rocket, many times as powerful as the Atlas which launched
John Glenn, generating power equivalent to 10,000 automobiles with their
accelerators on the floor.
We have seen the site where five F-1 rocket
engines, each one as powerful as all eight engines of the Saturn combined, will
be clustered together to make the advanced Saturn missile, assembled in a new
building to be built at Cape Canaveral as tall as a 48-story structure, as wide
as a city block, and as long as two lengths of this field.
Within these last 19 months at least 45
satellites have circled the earth. Some 40 of them were "made in the
United States of America" and they were far more sophisticated and
supplied far more knowledge to the people of the world than those of the Soviet
Union.
The Mariner spacecraft now on its way to
Venus is the most intricate instrument in the history of space science. The
accuracy of that shot is comparable to firing a missile from Cape Canaveral and
dropping it in this stadium between the 40-yard lines.
Transit satellites are helping our ships at
sea to steer a safer course. Tiros satellites have given us unprecedented
warnings of hurricanes and storms, and will do the same for forest fires and
icebergs.
We have had our failures, but so have others,
even if they do not admit them. And they may be less public.
To be sure, we are behind, and will be behind
for some time in manned flight. But we do not intend to stay behind, and in
this decade we shall make up and move ahead.
The growth of our science and education will
be enriched by new knowledge of our universe and environment, by new techniques
of learning and mapping and observation, by new tools and computers for
industry, medicine, the home as well as the school. Technical institutions,
such as Rice, will reap the harvest of these gains.
And finally, the space effort itself, while
still in its infancy, has already created a great number of new companies, and
tens of thousands of new jobs. Space and related industries are generating new
demands in investment and skilled personnel, and this city and this State, and
this region, will share greatly in this growth. What was once the furthest
outpost on the old frontier of the West will be the furthest outpost on the new
frontier of science and space. Houston, your City of Houston, with its Manned
Spacecraft Center, will become the heart of a large scientific and engineering
community.
During the next 5 years the National
Aeronautics and Space Administration expects to double the number of scientists
and engineers in this area, to increase its outlays for salaries and expenses
to $60 million a year; to invest some $200 million in plant and laboratory
facilities; and to direct or contract for new space efforts over $1 billion
from this Center in this City.
To be sure, all this costs us all a good deal
of money. This year's space budget is three times what it was in January 1961,
and it is greater than the space budget of the previous 8 years combined. That
budget now stands at $5,400 million a year-a staggering sum, though somewhat
less than we pay for cigarettes and cigars every year. Space expenditures will
soon rise some more from 40 cents per person per week to more than 50 cents a
week for every man, woman, and child in the United States, for we have given
this program a high national priority even though I realize that this is in
some measure an act of faith and vision, for we do not now know what benefits
await us.
But if I were to say, my fellow citizens,
that we shall send to the moon, 240,000 miles away from the control station in
Houston, a giant rocket more than 300 feet tall, the length of this football
field, made of new metal alloys, some of which have not yet been invented,
capable of standing heat and stresses several times more than have ever been
experienced, fitted together with a precision better than the finest watch,
carrying all the equipment needed for propulsion, guidance, control,
communications, food and survival, on an untried mission, to an unknown
celestial body, and then return it safely to earth, reentering the atmosphere
at speeds of over 25,000 miles per hour, causing heat about half that of the
temperature of the sun - almost as hot as it is here today - and do all this,
and do it right, and do it first before this decade is out, then we must be
bold.
I'm the one who is doing all the work, so we
just want you to stay cool for a minute. [Laughter]
However, I think we're going to do it, and I
think that we must pay what needs to be paid. I don't think we ought to waste
any money, but I think we ought to do the job. And this will be done in the
decade of the sixties. It may be done while some of you are still here at
school at this college and university. It will be done during the terms of
office of some of the people who sit here on this platform. But it will be
done. And it will be done before the end of this decade.
I am delighted that this university is
playing a part in putting a man on the moon as part of a great national effort
of the United States of America.
Many years ago the great British explorer
George Mallory, who was to die on Mount Everest, was asked why did he want to
climb it. He said, "Because it is there."
Well, space is there, and we're going to
climb it, and the moon and the planets are there, and new hopes for knowledge
and peace are there. And, therefore, as we set sail we ask God's blessing on
the most hazardous and dangerous and greatest adventure on which man has ever
embarked.
Thank you.
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