kennedy speech moon

John F. Kennedy (JFK) Moon Speech Transcript: “We Choose to Go to the Moon”

President John F. Kennedy’s Moon speech on September 12, 1962 in Rice Stadium. This speech was intended to persuade the American people to support the Apollo program. It is also referred to as the “We choose to go to the Moon” speech or “Address at Rice University on the Nation’s Space Effort.”

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John F. Kennedy: ( 00:04 ) 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. 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 about a half a 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 and cover them.

John F. Kennedy: ( 00:51 ) Then about 10 years ago, under this standard, man emerged from his caves to construct other kinds of shelter. Only five years ago, man learned to write and use a car with wheels. Christianity began less than two years ago. The printing press came this year. And 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, we developed penicillin and television and nuclear power. This is a breathtaking pace and such a pace cannot help but create new ails as it dispels old.

John F. Kennedy: ( 01:53 ) So it is not surprising that some would have us stay where we are a little longer, to rest, to wait. If this capsuled history of our progress teaches us anything, it is that man in his quest for knowledge and progress is determined and cannot be deterred.

John F. Kennedy: ( 02:15 ) We shall send to the moon 240,000 miles away, a giant rocket, more than 300 feet tall on an untried mission to an unknown celestial body, and then return it safely to Earth. 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? We choose to go to the moon. We chose 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’re willing to accept. One we are unwilling to postpone. And therefore, as we set sail, we ask God’s blessing on the most hazardous and dangerous and greatest adventure that man has ever gone.

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“We choose to go to the Moon”

"We choose to go to the Moon", officially titled the address at Rice University on the nation's space effort, is a September 12, 1962, speech by United States President John F. Kennedy to further inform the public about his plan to land a man on the Moon before 1970.

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 outstrip 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 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, and 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 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 the 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 the 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 five 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 of 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 eight years combined. That budget now stands at $5,400,000 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, re-entering 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 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. 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. 

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The decision to go to the moon: president john f. kennedy’s may 25, 1961 speech before a joint session of congress.

Michele Ostovar

Nasa history communications lead, excerpt from the "special message to the congress on urgent national needs", section ix: space:.

On May 25, 1961, President John F. Kennedy announced before a special joint session of Congress the dramatic and ambitious goal of sending an American safely to the Moon before the end of the decade. A number of political factors affected Kennedy’s decision and the timing of it. In general, Kennedy felt great pressure to have the United States “catch up to and overtake” the Soviet Union in the “space race.” Four years after the Sputnik shock of 1957, the cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin had become the first human in space on April 12, 1961, greatly embarrassing the U.S. While Alan Shepard became the first American in space on May 5, he only flew on a short suborbital flight instead of orbiting the Earth, as Gagarin had done. In addition, the Bay of Pigs fiasco in mid-April put unquantifiable pressure on Kennedy. He wanted to announce a program that the U.S. had a strong chance at achieving before the Soviet Union. After consulting with Vice President Johnson, NASA Administrator James Webb, and other officials, he concluded that landing an American on the Moon would be a very challenging technological feat, but an area of space exploration in which the U.S. actually had a potential lead. Thus the cold war is the primary contextual lens through which many historians now view Kennedy’s speech.

The decision involved much consideration before making it public, as well as enormous human efforts and expenditures to make what became Project Apollo a reality by 1969. Only the construction of the Panama Canal in modern peacetime and the Manhattan Project in war were comparable in scope. NASA’s overall human spaceflight efforts were guided by Kennedy’s speech; Projects Mercury (at least in its latter stages), Gemini, and Apollo were designed to execute Kennedy’s goal. His goal was achieved on July 20, 1969, when Apollo 11 commander Neil Armstrong stepped off the Lunar Module’s ladder and onto the Moon’s surface.

President John F. Kennedy Delivered in person before a joint session of Congress May 25, 1961   

Finally, if we are to win the battle that is now going on around the world between freedom and tyranny, the dramatic achievements in space which occurred in recent weeks should have made clear to us all, as did the Sputnik in 1957, the impact of this adventure on the minds of men everywhere, who are attempting to make a determination of which road they should take. Since early in my term, our efforts in space have been under review. With the advice of the Vice President, who is Chairman of the National Space Council, we have examined where we are strong and where we are not, where we may succeed and where we may not. Now it is time to take longer strides—time for a great new American enterprise—time for this nation to take a clearly leading role in space achievement, which in many ways may hold the key to our future on earth.

I believe we possess all the resources and talents necessary. But the facts of the matter are that we have never made the national decisions or marshaled the national resources required for such leadership. We have never specified long-range goals on an urgent time schedule, or managed our resources and our time so as to insure their fulfillment.

Recognizing the head start obtained by the Soviets with their large rocket engines, which gives them many months of lead-time, and recognizing the likelihood that they will exploit this lead for some time to come in still more impressive successes, we nevertheless are required to make new efforts on our own. For while we cannot guarantee that we shall one day be first, we can guarantee that any failure to make this effort will make us last. We take an additional risk by making it in full view of the world, but as shown by the feat of astronaut Shepard, this very risk enhances our stature when we are successful. But this is not merely a race. Space is open to us now; and our eagerness to share its meaning is not governed by the efforts of others. We go into space because whatever mankind must undertake, free men must fully share.

I therefore ask the Congress, above and beyond the increases I have earlier requested for space activities, to provide the funds which are needed to meet the following national goals:

First, I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the earth. No single space project in this period will be more impressive to mankind, or more important for the long-range exploration of space; and none will be so difficult or expensive to accomplish. We propose to accelerate the development of the appropriate lunar space craft. We propose to develop alternate liquid and solid fuel boosters, much larger than any now being developed, until certain which is superior. We propose additional funds for other engine development and for unmanned explorations—explorations which are particularly important for one purpose which this nation will never overlook: the survival of the man who first makes this daring flight. But in a very real sense, it will not be one man going to the moon—if we make this judgment affirmatively, it will be an entire nation. For all of us must work to put him there.

Secondly, an additional 23 million dollars, together with 7 million dollars already available, will accelerate development of the Rover nuclear rocket. This gives promise of some day providing a means for even more exciting and ambitious exploration of space, perhaps beyond the moon, perhaps to the very end of the solar system itself.

Third, an additional 50 million dollars will make the most of our present leadership, by accelerating the use of space satellites for world-wide communications.

Fourth, an additional 75 million dollars—of which 53 million dollars is for the Weather Bureau—will help give us at the earliest possible time a satellite system for world-wide weather observation.

Let it be clear—and this is a judgment which the Members of the Congress must finally make—let it be clear that I am asking the Congress and the country to accept a firm commitment to a new course of action, a course which will last for many years and carry very heavy costs: 531 million dollars in fiscal ’62—an estimated seven to nine billion dollars additional over the next five years. If we are to go only half way, or reduce our sights in the face of difficulty, in my judgment it would be better not to go at all.

Now this is a choice which this country must make, and I am confident that under the leadership of the Space Committees of the Congress, and the Appropriating Committees, that you will consider the matter carefully.

It is a most important decision that we make as a nation. But all of you have lived through the last four years and have seen the significance of space and the adventures in space, and no one can predict with certainty what the ultimate meaning will be of mastery of space.

I believe we should go to the moon. But I think every citizen of this country as well as the Members of the Congress should consider the matter carefully in making their judgment, to which we have given attention over many weeks and months, because it is a heavy burden, and there is no sense in agreeing or desiring that the United States take an affirmative position in outer space, unless we are prepared to do the work and bear the burdens to make it successful. If we are not, we should decide today and this year.

This decision demands a major national commitment of scientific and technical manpower, materiel and facilities, and the possibility of their diversion from other important activities where they are already thinly spread. It means a degree of dedication, organization and discipline which have not always characterized our research and development efforts. It means we cannot afford undue work stoppages, inflated costs of material or talent, wasteful interagency rivalries, or a high turnover of key personnel.

New objectives and new money cannot solve these problems. They could in fact, aggravate them further—unless every scientist, every engineer, every serviceman, every technician, contractor, and civil servant gives his personal pledge that this nation will move forward, with the full speed of freedom, in the exciting adventure of space.

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As the American space program once again looks toward the Moon, we revisit President John F. Kennedy’s 1961 challenge to land a man on the Moon and return him safely to the Earth.

When John F. Kennedy was sworn into office as President of the United States in 1961, plans for human space exploration were well underway for both the UnitedStates and the Soviet Union.

The Soviets  led the way—on April 12, 1961, cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin circled the Earth once in his Vostok spacecraft and returned safely. Gagarin's flight took place a month before American astronaut Alan Shepard's suborbital flight and 10 months before astronaut John Glenn became the first American to orbit the Earth.

Immediately after Gagarin's flight, President Kennedy wanted to know what the United States could do in space to take the lead from the Soviets.

President John F. Kennedy in his historic message to a joint session of the Congress, on May 25, 1961 declared, "...I believe this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth." This goal was achieved when astronaut Neil A. Armstrong became the first human to set foot upon the Moon at 10:56 p.m. EDT, July 20, 1969. Shown in the background are, (left) Vice President Lyndon Johnson, and (right) Speaker of the House Sam T. Rayburn.

NASA Image Number: S70-18218

On April 20, Kennedy sent a memo to Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson, outlining questions he wanted him to explore with NASA Administrator James E. Webb and Secretary of Defense Robert F. McNamara. “Do we have a chance of beating the Soviets by putting a laboratory in space, or by a trip around the moon, or by a rocket to land on the moon, or by a rocket to go to the moon and back with a man,” was his primary concern. In addition to things like costs required, Kennedy wanted to know: “Are we working 24 hours a day on existing programs. If not, why not?”

With that “if not, why not” question in mind, Johnson polled leaders in NASA and the military. He reported that "with a strong effort" the United States "could conceivably" beat the Soviets in sending a man around the Moon or landing a man on the Moon.

In May 1961, Webb and McNamara prepared a memo outlining the future of U.S. space exploration entitled “Recommendations for our National Space Program: Changes, Policies, Goals.”

The report stated that “to achieve the goal of landing a man on the moon and returning him to earth in the latter part of the current decade requires immediate initiation of an accelerated program of spacecraft development,” designated Project Apollo.

Under an outline for a new national space policy, McNamara and Webb described the types of projects the space program would be pursuing: “Projects in space may be undertaken for any one of four principal reasons. They may be aimed at gaining scientific knowledge. Some, in the future, will be of commercial or chiefly civilian value. Several current programs are of potential military value for functions such as reconnaissance and early warning. Finally, some space projects may be undertaken chiefly for reasons of national prestige.”

President Kennedy spent several weeks assessing America's options for competing with the Soviets in space. On May 25, 1961, he announced the goal of landing a man on the Moon before a joint session of Congress. At that point, the total time spent in space by an American was barely 15 minutes.

“...if we are to win the battle that is now going on around the world between freedom and tyranny, the dramatic achievements in space which occurred in recent weeks should have made clear to all of us, as did Sputnik in 1957, the impact of this adventure on the minds of men everywhere... Now it is time to take longer strides—time for this nation to take a clearly leading role in space achievement, which in many ways may hold the key to our future on Earth. ...we have never made the national decisions or marshaled the national resources required for such leadership. We have never specified long-range goals on an urgent time schedule... Space is open to us now; and our eagerness to share its meaning is not governed by the efforts of others. We go into space because whatever mankind must undertake, free men must fully share...

I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth. No single space project...will be more exciting, or more impressive to mankind, or more important...and none will be so difficult or expensive to accomplish...”  -President John F. Kennedy, May 1961

It’s a message Kennedy would echo in his 1962 State of the Union Address, and in his famous address at Rice University on September 12, 1962, where he declared  "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."

After President Kennedy's call for human exploration of the Moon, nearly all of NASA's efforts in space turned toward the goal of a lunar landing.

In the decade that followed, the Ranger, Surveyor and Lunar Orbiter spacecraft gathered data on the Moon. Thirteen robotic spacecraft transmitted detailed images of the Moon, and searched for landing sites for human explorers. In 1969, eight years after Kennedy’s initial challenge, two American astronauts took “one giant leap for mankind”—walking on the Moon for the first time.

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“We choose to go to the Moon”: Read JFK’s Moon speech in full

With the US trailing Russia in the space race, President Kennedy had to rally popular support for an increased American effort.

Piers Bizony

Yuri Gagarin’s spaceflight on 12 April 1961 was a major embarrassment for President John F Kennedy, the White House’s new occupant. Until that point, he hadn’t taken the space race seriously, and he was alarmed at the global response to Russia’s triumph. He paced the White House asking his advisors, “What can we do? How can we catch up?”

Just one week later, Kennedy suffered another defeat. A 1,300-strong force of exiled Cubans, supported by the CIA, landed at the Bay of Pigs in Cuba with the intention of destroying Fidel Castro’s regime. Kennedy had approved the invasion, but Castro’s troops knew what was coming and were waiting on the beaches. The raid was a complete disaster.

There was some encouragement for the new president, however. On 5 May 1961, NASA astronaut Alan Shepard was launched atop a small Redstone booster. His flight wasn’t a full orbit of Earth, merely a ballistic arc lasting approximately 15 minutes. Gagarin’s Vostok craft had circled the world, while Shepard’s little Mercury capsule splashed into the Atlantic just a few hundred kilometres from its launch site. But it was enough to prove NASA’s capabilities.

Read more about the space race:

• The Space Race: how Cold War tensions put a rocket under the quest for the Moon
• Nazis, magic and McCarthyism: the dark history of early American space exploration

Kennedy now turned to space as a means of bolstering his credibility. On 25 May 1961, he made his landmark address to Congress pledging America to a Moon landing “before this decade is out” and the Apollo project was born. But to accomplish the feat that many deemed to be misguided and, in some cases, unnecessary, he needed the support of the American public.

On 12 September 1962, he pitched his vision in a speech delivered to 40,000 people gathered at Rice University in Texas and it propelled the nation to a new frontier.

“We choose to go to the Moon”

“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 outstrip 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 timespan 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 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 and 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 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 breath-taking 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.

We set sail on this new sea because there is new knowledge to be gained, and new rights to be won

William Bradford, speaking in 1630 of the founding of the Plymouth Bay Colony, said that all great and honourable 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 the 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.

Read more about the life of JFK with these features on History Extra :

• Unseen photos of John F Kennedy and family
• JFK: style over substance? [Subscription required]
• Assassination of JFK: historians explore the conspiracy theories

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 theatre of war. I do not say the 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 many 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?

Listen to episodes of the Science Focus Podcast about the Moon Landing:

• The mindset behind the Moon landing – Richard Wiseman
• Why is the Moon landing still relevant 50 years on? – Kevin Fong

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 organise 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 the F-1 rocket engines, each one as powerful as all eight engines of the Saturn C-1 combined, will be clustered together to make the advanced Saturn V missile, assembled in a new building to be built at Cape Canaveral as tall as a 48-storey 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 [Television Infrared Observation] 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 five 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.

We have had our failures, but so have others, even if they do not admit them

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 eight 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 programme a high national priority – even though I realise 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, re-entering 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 ’60s. 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. 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.”

• Delivered by President John F Kennedy on 12 September 1962 at Rice Stadium, Rice University, Houston, Texas (Pres: Kenneth Pitzer)

Privilege and public service

John Fitzgerald Kennedy was born in Massachusetts on 29 May 1917, into one of America’s richest and most influential families. He had a charmed upbringing and graduated from Harvard in 1940 before serving in the US Naval Reserve during the Second World War.

After leaving the military, he rose quickly through the political ranks and ran as the Democratic candidate in the 1960 presidential election. His successful campaign, managed by his younger brother Robert Francis Kennedy, saw him become the 35th US President and enter the White House aged just 43.

The civil rights movement along with the escalating tensions in Vietnam and the Cold War made JFK’s first two years in the White House extremely turbulent. After narrowly avoiding a nuclear conflict as a result of 1962’s Cuban Missile Crisis, he successfully negotiated the Limited Nuclear Test Ban treaty in 1963, which the US, USSR and Great Britain agreed to sign.

Controversy surrounded JFK’s private life, however, and he’s believed to have conducted a string of extramarital affairs before and during his term in office, with a list of women said to include Marilyn Monroe and Marlene Dietrich. But the greatest tragedy came on 22 November 1963 when JFK was assassinated during a visit to Dallas, Texas. Although the killing was attributed to Lee Harvey Oswald (himself killed days later by Jack Ruby), many believe Kennedy’s assassination to have been the result of a conspiracy.

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Address at rice university in houston, texas on the nation's space effort, 12 september 1962.

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• Address at Rice University, Houston, Texas, 12 September 1962
• Inspection tour of NASA installations: Houston, Texas, motorcade, address at Rice University, 9:34AM
• Rice University, 12 September 1962

This day in history: JFK delivers iconic ‘We choose to go to the Moon’ speech

• September 9, 2019
• Space Center Houston

On Sept. 12, 1962, President John F. Kennedy declared that by the end of the decade, the United States would land astronauts on the Moon. It was 57 years ago today when Kennedy stood in front of a crowd of roughly 35,000 at Rice University and delivered his historic speech.

The space race had become heated between the Soviets and the United States. Just six weeks prior to the speech, Yuri Gagarin, a Soviet cosmonaut, became the first person in space. The pressure was on America to send astronauts into the final frontier.

John Logsdon, professor emeritus at George Washington University, explained Kennedy’s reasoning behind the speech while giving a talk at Space Center Houston. Logsdon pointed out that the speech wasn’t just to rally and inspire the nation to reach for the Moon. It was to explain to the American people why the Apollo program needed to be a high priority, which would allow for a “boost” in funds.

The U.S. government committed approximately $25 billion to the program, equivalent to over $100 billion today. NASA funding comprised 4.4% of the national budget in 1966. This amount of federal support further illustrates America’s dedication to taking the lead in the coveted space race.

No one knew if astronauts would make it to the Moon and walk on the surface. One thing was for sure: If it was possible, America wanted to be the first country to do it.

The speech marked a pivotal moment in the Apollo era, one that rallied the nation and committed the country to look to the Moon.

Watch the full speech in the NASA clip , where Kennedy proclaims his famous line, “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.”

Just seven years after the speech, Neil Armstrong stepped foot on the Moon and the world celebrated. It was more than a historic moment. It was a global victory.

The IBM lectern President Kennedy used in his “moon-shot” speech , gifted from Rice University in 1993, is on display in our Starship Gallery. Relive the moment lunar missions were made with this unique Apollo-era artifact. Watch our short documentary on the conservation efforts the Space Center Houston curatorial team undertook to preserve the artifact for future generations:

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“We choose to go to the Moon”: Remembering JFK’s Rice University speech

Not long after Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed the Lunar Module (LM) Eagle on the surface of the Moon in July 1969, someone paid a visit to Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia. Threading their way through its hallowed grounds to Lot 45, they surely spotted the dim glow of the John F. Kennedy Eternal Flame, then the bare Monson-slate marker for a president whose assassination six years earlier shocked the world. Pausing a moment, this anonymous visitor laid a small bouquet of flowers and a card. “Mr. President,” it read, with unabashed poignancy, “the Eagle has landed.”

It remains one of the great tragedies of the last century that Kennedy, the energetic young leader of the United States who, in May 1961, boldly directed his nation to land a man on the Moon before the decade’s end, did not live to see that promise fulfilled. Unsurprisingly for a politician, that promise was a politically motivated one, driven into force only weeks after the Soviet Union launched the first man into space and America globally humiliated itself with its failed attempt to topple Fidel Castro at Cuba’s Bay of Pigs.

Despite a constantly swaying pendulum of competing public opinion, Kennedy staunchly supported the lunar goal. There was disquiet over the president’s preferential treatment of the Moon above education and social welfare, for which he had vigorously campaigned during his years representing Massachusetts in the Senate. Indeed, a Gallup poll in May 1961 revealed only 42 percent of Americans heartily endorsed Kennedy’s bid for lunar glory.

The president had much to prove six decades ago today, on September 12, 1962, when he arrived at the 70,000-capacity Rice Stadium on the Rice University campus in Houston, Texas. The city had been chosen the year prior as the location for NASA’s Manned Spacecraft Center (MSC) — today’s Johnson Space Center (JSC) — and the university had played a pivotal role in its selection.

Kennedy aims for the Moon

As Kennedy took to the lectern around 10 A.M. that Wednesday morning, the stadium’s bleachers brimmed with a sweltering crowd of 40,000 or more. Fall semester classes were yet to begin, and the president’s audience members were mostly Rice freshmen, newly arrived on campus for orientation. Even at this early hour, temperatures looked set to soar to some 85 degrees Fahrenheit (30 degrees Celsius), as suited officials rhythmically tugged handkerchiefs from pockets to vigorously mop their brows. Perhaps aware of their discomfort, Kennedy pledged that his lecture would be brief.

Kennedy started his now-historic Rice speech by condensing the entirety of human history into a metaphoric 50-year “capsule of progress” to illuminate the relative recency of our evolution from cave-dwellers to farmers to space travelers. If all human history were condensed into a 50-year period, “Last month, electric lights and telephones and automobiles and airplanes became available,” Kennedy said, clearly relishing the extended metaphor. “Only last week did we develop penicillin and television and nuclear power.”

Humanity had advanced “at breathtaking pace,” he told the Rice crowd before stirring them with an equally breathless urgency to press on toward higher goals. “Some would have us stay where we are a little longer, to rest, to wait,” he said. “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.”

At this moment, his audience broke into spontaneous applause. Kennedy continued. “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?”

Much of the speech’s content flowed from the mind and pen of Ted Sorensen, a lawyer, writer and advisor Kennedy regarded as his ‘intellectual blood-bank.’ But the next words from the president’s mouth were his own, scribbled in ink between Sorensen’s neatly typed lines of prose. “Why,” Kennedy asked the Rice crowd with an undeniable twinkle in his eye, “does Rice play Texas?”

Now he had them rapt, his play on the long-standing Rice-Texas football rivalry instantly winning him the ears of sports and space fans alike.

“We choose to go to the Moon,” Kennedy repeated to thunderous applause, “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 we intend to win.”

The president recalled the great British mountaineer George Mallory, who was once asked why he so earnestly desired to summit Mount Everest. Mallory’s answer — “because it is there” — similarly inspired Kennedy’s desire to conquer the Moon, another aspect of the unknown. “And therefore, as we set sail,” Kennedy said, “we ask God’s blessing on the most hazardous and dangerous and greatest adventure on which man has ever embarked.”

Six decades on from that rousing 18-minute Rice speech, Kennedy’s words continue to resonate. Although most U.S. presidents over the past 30 years have promoted grand national goals of sending humans to the Moon, little of their rhetoric has matched the energetic vigor of the United States’ youngest leader. Kennedy was a man of vision, whose presidency spanned a time of great optimism and hopefulness for the future of space travel.

Officially known as the Address at Rice University on the Nation’s Space Effort , Kennedy’s words are better known today as the “We Choose” speech. And as a new rocket, the Space Launch System (SLS), sits poised in Florida to return humans to the Moon before the present decade is out , his words of human choice, hard work, and uncompromising endeavor in the face of adversity still carry great weight today.

Kennedy’s principal goal, admittedly, was to beat the Soviet Union in a bygone age of geopolitical and ideological dominance. But the Rice speech he presented to the American public 60 summers ago still retains its naked power, capable of igniting the human spirit and nurturing our sense of optimism for the future. And this aspiration to follow our human urge to explore the unknown, surely, remains a central tenet of what makes us who we are.

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