Editor’s Note: On September 12, 1962, President John F. Kennedy gave this motivating speech at Rice University in Houston, Texas. Though never stating it directly, Kennedy implied that the U.S. needed to land on the moon before the Soviet Union, which was locked in a Cold War against the U.S. Only seven months earlier, the United States had made John Glenn the first American to orbit the Earth, one year after the Soviet Union had already put a man in space. On July 20, 1969, astronauts Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong helped realize Kennedy’s dream by landing on the moon and then coming safely back to Earth. Unfortunately, Kennedy did not live to see it.
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. 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.
Most of the scientists that the world has ever known are alive and working today. Despite that, vast stretches of the unknown and the unanswered and the unfinished are beyond what we can even comprehend.
No man can fully grasp how far and how fast we have come. Still, condense, if you will, the 50,000 years of man’s recorded history in a time span of only 50 years. 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 themselves. Then about 10 years ago, under this standard, man came out of his caves to build other types of shelter. Only five years ago man learned to write and use a cart with wheels. Christianity began less than two years ago. The printing press came this year. Then, less than two 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 a way to fight bacteria with penicillin, to create television and nuclear power. 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. Such a pace cannot help but create new ills as it dispels old, new ignorance, new problems, new dangers. Surely the idea of going to space promises 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 spoke in 1630 of the founding of the Plymouth Bay Colony. He said that all great and honorable actions are accompanied with great difficulties. 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. He cannot be deterred. The exploration of space will go ahead. Whether we join in it or not, it is one of the great adventures of all time. No nation which expects to be the leader of other nations can expect to stay behind in the race for space.
Those who came before us made certain that this country was among the first to join the industrial revolutions. They helped start the first waves of modern invention. They helped create nuclear power. This generation does not intend to miss out on 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. 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 our quest to space as a means to destroy others. It will be a quest for knowledge and understanding.
Yet the vows of this nation can only be fulfilled if we in this nation are first. Therefore, we intend to be first. In short, our leadership in science and in industry, our hopes for peace and security, what we owe to ourselves and others, all require us to make this effort. We have to try 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. Space science, like nuclear science and all technology, cannot tell right from wrong. The United States must be first and must be best so it can help decide whether this will be a sea of peace or a new terrifying place for war.
I do not say that we should or will go unprotected. I do say that space can be explored and mastered without feeding the fires of war. We can explore without repeating the mistakes that other men have made while trying to claim this globe of ours for themselves.
There is no strife, no prejudice, no national conflict in outer space as yet. Its dangers are a risk to us all. Conquering it deserves the best of all mankind, and its opportunity for peaceful cooperation may never come again. “But why the moon?” some say. Why choose this as our goal? They may well ask why climb the highest mountain? Why, 35 years ago, fly the Atlantic? Why does Rice University play football against the University of 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. We choose to go to the moon because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills. We choose to go because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone and one which we intend to win.
It is for these reasons that I regard the decision to go to space as one of the most important decisions that will be made during my presidency.
In the last 24 hours we have felt the ground shake and the air shattered by the testing of a Saturn C-1 booster rocket. It is many times more powerful as the Atlas which launched John Glenn. Its power can be compared to 10,000 automobiles with their gas pedals to the floor. We have seen the site where the F-1 rocket engines will be made. Each engine is as powerful as all eight engines of the Saturn combined. They will be grouped together to make the advanced Saturn missile. They will be put together in a new building to be built at Cape Canaveral. The building is to be huge. It will be 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.
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. In this decade, we shall make up for lost time. We shall move ahead.
The growth of our science and education will grow from new knowledge of our universe and environment, from new ways of learning and mapping and observation. They will be enriched by new tools and computers for businesses, medicine, the home and the school. Universities, 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. This city and this state and this region will share greatly in this growth.
Once, our goal was to explore the new frontier of the West. Now, it is 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 five years the National Aeronautics and Space Administration expects to double the number of scientists and engineers in this area.
To be sure, all this costs us all a good deal of money. That budget now stands at $5.4 billion a year—a staggering sum, though somewhat less than we pay for cigarettes and cigars every year. 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, a giant rocket more than 300 feet tall, the length of this football field. If I were to say that this giant rocket was made of new metals, some of which have not yet been invented, and fitted together with a precision better than the finest watch. And if I were to say that it will carry all the equipment needed to propel, guide, control and communicate. If it had all the food and supplies needed to go on an untried mission, and then return safely to Earth, reentering the incredibly hot atmosphere. To do all this, and do it right, and do it first—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.
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 should waste any money, but I think we should 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 term 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. 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.
