Here is the video clip of
Kennedy's entire We Choose to Go to the Moon speech.
Scroll down for the transcript.
It follows the full text transcript of
John F. Kennedy's To the Moon speech, delivered at
Rice University in Houston, Texas - September 12, 1962.
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 Nationıs 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 manıs recorded history in a time span
of but 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 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 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?
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 yearıs 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 Stated, 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.
