moon speech

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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“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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50 years ago today, JFK explained why ‘we choose to go to the moon’

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Fifty years ago today, President Kennedy made his case to the American people that the country should send a man 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,” Kennedy told an outdoor audience at Rice University in Houston.

The Sept. 12, 1962, speech came more than a year after the Soviets sent cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin into space, becoming the first human to orbit the Earth. His April 12, 1961, flight lasted less than two hours, but the space race was on.

Three weeks later, NASA astronaut Alan Shepard became the first American to travel to space with a five-minute suborbital flight.

Kennedy first articulated his goal of “landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the Earth” by the end of the 1960s in an address to Congress on May 25, 1961. But it’s JFK’s speech at Rice that is remembered for its explanation of why the U.S. had to “become the world’s leading space-faring nation”:

“The exploration of space will go ahead, whether we join in it or not,” Kennedy said. “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.”

“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 they become a force for good or ill depends on man. And only if the United States occupies a position of preeminence can we help decide whether this new ocean will be a sea of peace or a new terrifying theater of war.”

To underscore the extent of the challenge, Kennedy laid out many of the obstacles American scientists and engineers were up against:

“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 temperatures of the sun – almost as hot as it is here today – and do all this, and do it right, and do it first before the decade is out – then we must be bold.”

In closing, he called the space race “the most hazardous and dangerous and greatest adventure on which man has ever embarked.”

To mark the anniversary of Kennedy’s speech, NASA astronaut Suni Williams weighed in with her thoughts from aboard the International Space Station.

“With that strong charge, NASA not only reached the moon,” she said, “the agency accomplished countless milestones in science, aeronautics and human space flight, including this extraordinary laboratory where I am today, the International Space Station.”

Floating inside the station with her hair defying gravity, Williams noted that “every day, as astronauts continue to live and work in space, and as NASA develops ways for humans to reach an asteroid and Mars, President Kennedy’s vision is alive and thriving.”

You can watch Kennedy’s speech on this NASA website , along with Williams’ tribute here .

Return to the Science Now blog .

Follow me on Twitter @LATkarenkaplan

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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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How space exploration has changed, 60 years since JFK's 'We Choose the Moon' speech

Dustin Jones

Sixty years ago, President John F. Kennedy delivered an address at Rice University to inspire Americans to support NASA's mission to the moon. In what became known as his "We Choose the Moon" speech, Kennedy promised to put an American astronaut on the moon before the end of the 1960s. Anonymous/AP hide caption

Sixty years ago, President John F. Kennedy delivered an address at Rice University to inspire Americans to support NASA's mission to the moon. In what became known as his "We Choose the Moon" speech, Kennedy promised to put an American astronaut on the moon before the end of the 1960s.

It's been 60 years since President John F. Kennedy spoke to a crowd of more than 30,000 about America's race to the moon. His "We Choose the Moon" speech became a pivotal moment in the space program, rallying the nation behind a mission that was far from certain.

"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," Kennedy told the crowd at Rice University in Houston. The president promised to put a man on the moon before the end of the decade, and seven years later, he delivered , with the Apollo 11 moon landing in 1969 .

Space exploration has come a long way since Kennedy kicked America's space program into overdrive.

The moon was just the beginning

A NASA rover traversing the surface of Mars. NASA hide caption

A NASA rover traversing the surface of Mars.

One of NASA's most incredible achievements may very well be when it landed a rover on Mars, which took place less than 30 years after a man first touched down on the moon.

Scientists have gone back to Mars more than a handful of times since that first Mars rover landing in 1997, using sophisticated robots to explore the red planet and its potential for supporting life.

Space exploration has gone commercial

NASA astronaut Robert Hines climbed into a Tesla before boarding a SpaceX launch in April 2021. Aubrey Gemignani/AP hide caption

NASA astronaut Robert Hines climbed into a Tesla before boarding a SpaceX launch in April 2021.

When Kennedy announced that the United States was going to put a man on the moon, the then-Soviet Union and the U.S. were the main players in the space race. But now, there are multiple companies focused on space exploration, including Elon Musk's SpaceX.

Musk aims to send a crewed mission to Mars in 2029, 60 years after the moon landing.

He's not the only billionaire looking to leave the planet. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos has Blue Origin , and British business mogul Richard Branson has Virgin Galactic. Earlier this year , Branson's company opened up ticket sales for commercial passenger flights that it says will start in 2022, at a price of $450,000 per reservation.

Space telescopes can capture so much more

NASA's James Webb Space Telescope captured images of some of the oldest galaxies in the universe this summer. NASA, ESA, CSA, and STScI hide caption

NASA's James Webb Space Telescope captured images of some of the oldest galaxies in the universe this summer.

The James Webb Space Telescope relayed images of some of the oldest galaxies in the universe earlier this summer. The $10 billion observatory launched last December on a mission to find the first galaxies that formed after the Big Bang.

But Webb does more than just taking stellar photos . Scientists are using the telescope to study the atmospheres of other planets and to better understand the fundamentals of dark matter.

NASA is going back to the moon

An illustration of what a base camp on the moon's surface could look like. Astronauts could find themselves living on the moon for up to two months, according to NASA. NASA hide caption

An illustration of what a base camp on the moon's surface could look like. Astronauts could find themselves living on the moon for up to two months, according to NASA.

Fifty years after the last moon landing, NASA announced it's going back. Astronauts will once again touch down on the lunar surface to study rock and ice samples.

NASA eyes late September for its next attempt to launch the Artemis moon mission

The moon missions could serve as a stepping stone to the grand plan of putting a man on Mars by establishing a permanent human presence on the lunar surface through NASA's Artemis program.

The goal is to establish an Artemis Base Camp on the lunar surface, including a rover and lunar cabin, where astronauts may live for as long as two months at a time, according to NASA.

May 25, 1961: JFK's Moon Shot Speech to Congress

Fifty years ago, on May 25, 1961, President John F. Kennedy gave a historic speech before a joint session of Congress that set the United States on a course to the moon.

In his speech, Kennedy called for an ambitious space exploration program that included not just missions to put astronauts on the moon, but also a Rover nuclear rocket, weather satellites and other space projects. [ Video: President Kennedy's Moonshot Moment ]

This NASA-provided transcript shows the text of Kennedy's speech and what it called for, in 1961, to put Americans in space and on the moon before the decade ended. About 2 1/2 years after giving the speech,  later, Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963. Just over eight years after the speech, on July 20, 1969, NASA's Apollo 11 mission would land the first humans on the moon.

Here's a look at Kennedy's speech to Congress:

President John F. Kennedy

Delivered in person before a joint session of Congress May 25, 1961

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Section IX: Space:

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 7 to 9 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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What did JFK mean by "and the others" in his "We choose to go to the moon" speech?

In John F. Kennedy's Moon Speech on September 12, 1962 at Rice University, what does " and the others, too " refer to in the following excerpt?

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.

The specific part of the the following:

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 seems to be part of the "that challenge is..." is clause referring to going to the Moon, in which case I'm not sure what it would refer to.

Alternately, does it refer to "do the other things" earlier in the passage, or something else?

• $\begingroup$ this answer to Why are there no more manned missions to the Moon? discusses the speech, but I don't know if it sheds any light on your question. $\endgroup$ –  uhoh Commented Jul 31, 2021 at 15:36
• $\begingroup$ Perhaps the other space related things - "send an man to the Moon and bring them safely back again", $\endgroup$ –  Slarty Commented Jul 31, 2021 at 18:00
• $\begingroup$ @Slarty Easily believable, except that this speech doesn't mention that "other thing." It might be a reference to this unstated "rest of the challenge," if we assume the audience was sufficiently aware of that "and returning him safely to Earth" clause (from the prior year's address to Congress) so that it was just understood, but I think OrganicMarble has the more likely list of "other things." $\endgroup$ –  Ralph J Commented Aug 2, 2021 at 3:11
• $\begingroup$ This seems better suited for history. $\endgroup$ –  JimmyJames Commented Aug 2, 2021 at 15:05
• $\begingroup$ it's nothing more than a reference to things mentioned in the earlier sentences. $\endgroup$ –  Fattie Commented Aug 2, 2021 at 18:34

2 Answers 2

I'm pretty sure it's a weak joke calling back to a previous reference in the speech.

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

"The other things" here refers to climbing the highest mountain, flying the Atlantic, and Rice University playing [American college] football against the University of Texas. Rice and Texas have a long-standing football rivalry (now over a century old); "Rice playing Texas" is a challenge of particular resonance with JFK's audience at this speech. That brings us to the passage you cite:

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.

Assuming the same set of "others" here, this is superficially a puzzling construction. The challenges of climbing the highest mountain and flying the Atlantic had already been won, so it's nonsensical to talk about "intending to win" them. That leaves only Rice playing Texas, so my interpretation is that JFK is jokingly saying "we [the United States] intend to go to the moon, and we [his Rice University audience] intend to beat Texas."

Here's the printed script for the speech:

"Why does Rice play Texas?" has been handwritten in ( possibly by Kennedy himself ) -- a late addition to the text -- and the phrase you're asking about isn't present at all, strongly suggesting it was ad-libbed as a callback to the Rice/Texas reference, which might explain why it's so grammatically clunky.

At the time of the speech, Rice and UT were 5-5 over the previous decade despite UT being a significantly larger school. JFK's speech doesn't seem to have brought Rice much luck; Rice and Texas' next game, a little over a month after the speech, was a 14-14 tie, and in the forty-odd games between the two since then, Rice has only won twice.

• 1 $\begingroup$ Curse of the Kenedino? $\endgroup$ –  Harper - Reinstate Monica Commented Aug 1, 2021 at 1:23
• 10 $\begingroup$ And "Rice playingTexas" was supposedly added to wake up the audience, JFK needed them to cheer for the moon 😉 $\endgroup$ –  Peter M. - stands for Monica Commented Aug 1, 2021 at 1:34
• 3 $\begingroup$ Nice answer. I've always wondered about this phrasing, and I just assumed that he couldn't remember what the other thing was and just filled it in with a generic phrase. I should have known better, JFK was a much better speaker than that. $\endgroup$ –  RBarryYoung Commented Aug 1, 2021 at 12:20
• 1 $\begingroup$ Nice one. I wanted more of that hand-edited draft, and found it at the JFK Library , where it's bundled with several other transcripts and drafts. Your image is found on page 32; an earlier draft (the matching part being at page 14) is interesting for having the deleted line, "Why take on the toughest team?", which seems to parallel the later addition, "Why does Rice play Texas?" $\endgroup$ –  Tim Pederick Commented Aug 2, 2021 at 12:02
• 2 $\begingroup$ Re: "a puzzling construction" I don't think he was saying that we intended to do something about them in the future, but more like we did them for the same reason we're doing this too: because it's hard and we can. Still, equally confusing to include sports in that unless Rice always loses to Texas or something. $\endgroup$ –  coblr Commented Aug 2, 2021 at 19:44

"The other things" are the other goals of his administration mentioned earlier in the speech,

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.

(Emphasis mine)

Text of speech: https://er.jsc.nasa.gov/seh/ricetalk.htm

• $\begingroup$ This answer is correct... "we intend to be first" (first sentence quoted in this answer, introducing the list of goals early in the speech) parallels "we intend to win" (quoted in the OP, near the end of the speech) -- win the race to the moon, and these other goals as well. Parallel language like that isn't accidental in Presidential speeches; the speech writers consider their words carefully. $\endgroup$ –  Ralph J Commented Aug 2, 2021 at 3:00
• 3 $\begingroup$ @Ralph: But as Russell's answer shows, "the other things"/"the others too" were not original parts from the speechwriters. So while they may have put in the "intend" parallel, it doesn't explain what the "other things" were. And to say they intend to "do" leadership in science and industry, "do" hopes for peace and security, is an ill grammatical fit. $\endgroup$ –  Tim Pederick Commented Aug 2, 2021 at 11:54

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We Choose to Go to the Moon . . . not Because that will be Easy, but Because it will be Hard.

Written by: developer

Note: The Headline for this article uses the original quote, as was written for the speech, “ We choose to go to the moon in this decade, not because that will be easy, but because it will be hard…”, rather than the quote as delivered, “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…”

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 thousand 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 this race for space.

Those who came before us made certain that this country rode the first waves of the industrial revolution, 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 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 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… (interrupted by 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 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 thousand 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… (interrupted by applause) 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,… (interrupted by applause) 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, (interrupted by applause) 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 dollars a year; to invest some 200 million dollars in plant and laboratory facilities; and to direct or contract for new space efforts over 1 billion dollars 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 eight years combined. That budget now stands at 5 billion, 400 million dollars 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 thousand 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 thousand 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.

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.

And 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. 

Photo: JFK’s actual reading copy for his Moon speech at Rice University, with the headline quote as originally written

This article is part of Space Watch: July 2009 (Volume: 8, Issue: 7) .

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On this day 60 years ago, President John F. Kennedy pledged the US would land a person on the moon. Decades later, NASA has a plan to go back.

• September 12 marks 60 years since President Kennedy delivered his famous "moon speech" at Rice University in Texas.
• NASA plans to land  astronauts on the moon  for the first time since 1972 with its Artemis missions.
• Artemis I is the first step: an uncrewed flight test to the moon and back.

Standing behind a podium at Rice University's football stadium 60 years ago, President John F. Kennedy pledged the United States would put boots on the moon by the end of the decade.

"But why, some say, the moon?" he posed to the crowd of 40,000 people on September 12, 1962. "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."

In the 60 years since Kennedy's speech, space exploration has helped us discover much about the cosmos and humanity's place within it.

Bill Nelson, NASA's administrator, gave a keynote speech at Rice University's football stadium on Monday, where he mentioned how, with the Artemis missions , the space agency is poised to return to the moon for the first time in half a century — this time to stay.

"There are defining days when minds change, hearts fill, and imagination soar. One of those days happened 60 years ago, at the same stadium in the same sweltering heat of a sunny September day," Nelson told the crowd, which included NASA officials, astronauts, and students.

"Today, in Space City, a new generation — the Artemis generation — stands ready to return humanity to the moon and then to take us further than ever before, to Mars. It's not going to be easy. It's going to be hard," he added.

Related stories

'We choose to go to the moon'

Kennedy gave the iconic speech amid a fierce space race with the Soviet Union; it'd been a year since the USSR's earth-shaking achievement of putting the first person, Yuri Gagarin , in space in 1961.

In the speech, Kennedy wanted to explain to the nation why the Apollo program was such a high priority. He stressed that humanity's charge into space is a given, and that the world would be better off with the US leading that charge.

"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," he said. "We have vowed that we shall not see space filled with weapons of mass destruction, but with instruments of knowledge and understanding."

Just seven years after Kennedy's speech at Rice University, on July 20, 1969, Apollo 11 commander Neil Armstrong stepped off the Lunar Module's ladder and onto the Moon's surface.

60 years of exploration

NASA landed five more missions on the moon, with the last of them — Apollo 17 — touching down in 1972 . And while there have been no boots on the moon since then, the space agency continued sending humans off into space.

Skylab, the first US-operated outpost in space, was launched into Earth orbit on May 14, 1973. Observations of the Sun were one of the orbiting laboratory's primary achievements, according to NASA . It spent six years orbiting Earth until its decaying orbit caused it to reenter the atmosphere, scattering debris over the Indian Ocean and parts of Australia.

Between 1981 and July 2011, NASA's space shuttle fleet — Columbia, Challenger, Discovery, Atlantis, and Endeavour — flew 135 missions, taking more than 350 astronauts into space.

And since November 2, 2000, humanity has had a continuous presence on the International Space Station .

Going back to the moon

In a bid to return astronauts to the lunar surface, NASA has spent 17 years and an estimated $50 billion developing the Space Launch System  and its Orion spaceship.

The bright new SLS rocket stands taller than the Statue of Liberty, at 23 stories, with the spaceship secured up top. Four car-sized engines and two rocket boosters should give it enough thrust to push Orion all the way around the moon — farther than any spacecraft built for humans has ever flown. That's where NASA's first SLS mission, called Artemis I, is taking it.

When it launches, as soon as September 23, the SLS rocket should deliver the Orion spaceship on a trajectory to circle the moon and return to Earth.

There won't be any people on board , but if the spaceship successfully completes its mission, NASA plans to put astronauts in the Orion module for another trip around the moon, then land them on the lunar surface, in 2025.

"This is now the Artemis generation," Nelson said at a press briefing on August 3. "We were in the Apollo generation, but this is a new generation, this is a new type of astronaut. And to all of us that gaze up at the moon, dreaming of the day humankind returns to the lunar surface, folks, we're here. We are going back and that journey, our journey, begins with Artemis I."

This story has been updated with new information. It was originally published on August 20, 2022.

Watch: JFK's famous 'we choose to go to the moon' speech will make you believe you can do anything

• Main content

Address at Rice University on the Nation's Space Effort, September 12, 1962

President John F. Kennedy 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 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 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 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 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.

Ukraine war latest: Putin blitzes city near border, killing seven - with Poland activating air defences

At least seven people - including three children - have been killed in the western Ukrainian city of Lviv by overnight Russian strikes, according to authorities. It comes just a day after two missiles killed more than 50 people and injured hundreds in Poltava.

Wednesday 4 September 2024 12:25, UK

• Russia continues heavy bombardment of Ukrainian cities
• Seven killed in Lviv - including three children
• Ukraine's foreign minister resigns as reshuffle looms
• More than 50 killed in double strike on Ukrainian city yesterday
• Dominic Waghorn: Putin rubbing salt in wounds as Kyiv pleads for long-range attacks
• Ukraine planning to hold seized Russian territory indefinitely
• Watch: Zelenskyy discusses Kursk invasion in TV interview
• Live reporting by Ollie Cooper

Ukraine's parliament has started voting on major ministerial dismissals announced yesterday. 

The parliament failed to sack the head of the state property fund, Vitaliy Koval, in the first vote, lawmakers said. 

It comes as the country's foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, resigned earlier this morning (see 6.56am post) - the highest-profile casualty so far of a major government reshuffle ordered by President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

Mr Kuleba, 43, did not give a reason for stepping down.

Mr Zelenskyy indicated last week that a reshuffle was imminent, in what has been cast as the start of a government "reset" ahead of the cold autumn and winter seasons. 

Residents in Lviv are waking up to significant destruction after an overnight attack on the western city.

One woman has described how she was forced to leave the shelter she was hiding in because "everything was on fire". She also struggled to find another shelter because "smoke [was] covering everything".

Another man said Russia was trying to "destroy and intimidate us" by hitting residential areas.

Watch the full video below...

Vladimir Putin has returned from his controversial trip to Mongolia and is visiting the eastern city of Vladivostok today. 

He met the Chinese vice president Han Zheng at the Eastern Economic Forum before speaking with Russian Pacific fleet commander Admiral Viktor Liina, at the naval base of the Russian Pacific Fleet's Primorye Flotilla.

Ukraine had called for Mongolia to arrest Putin on an international warrant for alleged war crimes stemming from Moscow's invasion in 2022.

Instead, Mr Putin received a warm welcome from the nation - a member of the International Criminal Court, which issued the warrant in March 2023.

More on the Russian strikes on the western city of Lviv overnight. 

We reported earlier that at least seven people had died including three children (see 7.08am post).

Among those killed were a nine-year-old and a 14-year-old, regional governor Maksym Kozytskyi said on Telegram. A medical worker is also believed to have died.

The city's mayor, Andriy Sadovyi, said that four of the victims were related.

Yevheniya Bazylevych is the only surviving member of his family after the strike killed his wife and three young daughters, including Yaryna, 21, who worked in the mayor's office. 

Ukraine's interior minister, Ihor Klymenko, said the attack had injured around 40 people.

More than 70 buildings, including schools, homes and clinics, were also damaged.

At least seven local architectural monuments in Lviv were affected. All were located in the city's historic area and UNESCO buffer zone, which aims to protect World Heritage property.

Meanwhile, five people were injured in the city of Kryvyi Rih - President Zelenskyy's hometown. A 10-year-old was among the injured, Dnipropetrovsk regional governor Serhiy Lysak said.

We've no update on casualties from Kyiv, but we'll bring you more as we get it. 

Military analyst Simon Diggens has said the latest strikes on Ukraine show Vladimir Putin is "making a point that his offensive in the east has not been stalled by what has happened in the Kursk offensive".  

Watch the full analysis below...

Russia has said the agenda of Washington and the "collective West" has forced the country to change its nuclear doctrine.

The existing nuclear doctrine, set out in a decree by President Vladimir Putin in 2020, says Russia may use nuclear weapons in case of a nuclear attack by an enemy or a conventional attack that threatens the existence of the state.

The new revisions have not been detailed but come "against the backdrop of the challenges and threats provoked by the countries of the so-called collective West", Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said today.

Moscow is taking into account the possibility of Ukraine using US-supplied long-range weapons in its attacks deep into the Russian territory, he added.

Russia's foreign ministry also warned the West and Ukraine this morning that Moscow will give an immediate response in the event of long-range strikes on Russian territory by Ukraine. 

Maria Zakharova, Russia's foreign ministry spokeswoman, said the response would be "extremely painful". 

She also said the West "should think about the risks of further escalation of the Ukraine conflict" and that Western politicians are losing touch with reality.

The Irish taoiseach - or prime minister - Simon Harris is in Kyiv today as Ireland prepares to announce millions in new funding for Ukraine.

Mr Harris, who arrived in Ukraine on Wednesday morning, will sign a joint agreement with Volodymyr Zelenskyy on support and co-operation during a bilateral meeting in the Ukrainian capital.

The Irish leader will visit areas bombed by Russia and also meet Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal.

Mr Harris said: "I want to see first hand and with my own eyes the impact of war on the continent of Europe."

The taoiseach will also announce €43m (£36m) in aid to Ukraine - the majority of which will provide essential humanitarian assistance, support rehabilitation and eventual reconstruction, and contribute to Ukraine's longer-term goals, including peace, stability and political aspirations.

The latest package will take Ireland's total funding to Ukraine since February 2022 to more than €380m (£320m), including about €130m (£110m) in stabilisation and humanitarian support.

As part of a policy of military neutrality, Ireland does not provide what it characterises as lethal aid to Ukraine, including weapons.

However, the state has provided €250m (£210m) in non-lethal military assistance under the European Peace Facility, and has welcomed more than 100,000 Ukrainians under the EU Temporary Protection Directive.

Vladimir Putin is four months into his fifth term as Russian president, and shows no signs of leaving his role. 

But when the Kremlin leader eventually chooses a successor, the Institute of the Study of War (ISW) says that person is likely to hold the same views as Mr Putin. 

The institute said in its daily update that Mr Putin's inner circle and the wider Russian government "have publicly stated their aversion to peace negotiations with Ukraine on terms other than capitulation".

"Putin's successor is far more likely to hold such views than to reject them in the absence of significant Russian setbacks," it said.

"The Kremlin has spent years denying the existence of a Ukrainian nation and delegitimising Ukrainian sovereignty, and this effort has had widespread and likely long-term impacts on Russian society and elite opinion."

Not only that, but the ISW also said that any negotiated ceasefire "will only benefit Russia and will afford the Kremlin time to further radicalise and militarise Russian society against Ukraine and the Russian military time to rest and reconstitute, likely before conducting a future attack on Ukraine".

These images show the aftermath of the latest Russian strikes on Ukraine. 

As we reported in our last post, local officials have said at least seven people have died after strikes on the western city of Lviv, including three children.

These pictures come to us from the scene of that strike, near residential buildings in the city.  

An update on our 6.21am post, which outlined Russian strikes on Lviv and Kyiv overnight. 

At least seven people have died after strikes on the western city of Lviv, including three children, the mayor has now said.

Dozens are thought to be injured, Andriy Sadovy added. 

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SAG Awards 2024 winners: See the complete list

The 2024 screen actors guild awards is finally here. so, who scored a win saturday night find out here with the full list of winners., by jamie blynn | e • published february 24, 2024 • updated on february 24, 2024 at 9:01 pm.

Originally appeared on E! Online

So, who will The Actor statue go to at the 2024 SAG Awards ?

📺 Los Angeles news 24/7: Watch NBC4 free wherever you are

No need to panic, we've got you covered. ICYMI, the Feb. 24 event — which steamed live Netflix — honored the best in TV and film.

Several films and shows scored numerous nominations, including "Barbie," "Oppenheimer" and "Succession."

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Pedro Pascal admits he's ‘a little drunk' and ‘making a fool of myself' during SAG Awards speech

SAG Awards 2024: Stars React to Their Nominations

Other winners the star-studded evening? " Devil Wears Prada" fans , Anne Hathaway , Meryl Streep and Emily Blunt reunited on stage 18 years after the film had us wondering if that top is turquoise, lapis or actually cerulean.

Plus, EGOT winner Barbra Streisand gave an inspiring speech after she received the Life Achievement Award, which was presented by Jennifer Aniston.

"Ever since I was a young girl sitting in the Loew's Kings Theatre in Brooklyn, I dreamed of being one of those actresses I saw on the screen," the 81-year-old said in a statement. "The movies were a portal to a world I could only imagine."

"Even though I was an unlikely candidate, somehow my dream came true," Streisand continued. "This award is especially meaningful to me because it comes from my fellow actors, whom I so admire."

As for what other stars walk away with an Actor statue? We'll update the list below as the awards are handed out:

Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Television Movie or Limited Series

Matt Bomer, Fellow Travelers Jon Hamm, Fargo David Oyelowo, Lawmen: Bass Reeves Tony Shalhoub, Mr. Monk's Last Case: A Monk Movie WINNER: Steven Yeun, Beef

Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Television Movie or Limited Series

Uzo Aduba, Painkiller Kathryn Hahn, Tiny Beautiful Things Brie Larson, Lessons in Chemistry Bel Powley, A Small Light WINNER: Ali Wong, Beef

Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Supporting Role

Sterling K. Brown, American Fiction Willem Dafoe, Poor Things Robert De Niro, Killers of the Flower Moon WINNER: Robert Downey Jr., Oppenheimer Ryan Gosling, Barbie

Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Supporting Role

Emily Blunt, Oppenheimer Danielle Brooks, The Color Purple Penélope Cruz, Ferrari Jodie Foster, Nyad WINNER: Da'Vine Joy Randolph, The Holdovers

Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Leading Role

Bradley Cooper, Maestro Colman Domingo, Rustin Paul Giamatti, The Holdovers WINNER: Cillian Murphy, Oppenheimer Jeffrey Wright, American Fiction

Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Leading Role

Annette Bening, Nyad WINNER: Lily Gladstone, Killers of the Flower Moon Carey Mulligan, Maestro Margot Robbie, Barbie Emma Stone, Poor Things

Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Drama Series

Brian Cox, Succession Billy Crudup, The Morning Show Kieran Culkin, Succession Matthew MacFadyen, Succession WINNER: Pedro Pascal, The Last of Us

Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Drama Series

Jennifer Aniston, The Morning Show WINNER: Elizabeth Debicki, The Crown Bella Ramsey, The Last of Us Keri Russell, The Diplomat Sarah Snook, Succession

Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Comedy Series

Brett Goldstein, Ted Lasso Bill Hader, Barry Ebon Moss-Bachrach, The Bear Jason Sudeikis, Ted Lasso WINNER: Jeremy Allen White, The Bear

Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Comedy Series

Alex Borstein, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel Rachel Brosnahan, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel Quinta Brunson, Abbott Elementary WINNER: Ayo Edebiri, The Bear Hannah Waddingham, Ted Lasso

Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Drama Series

The Crown The Gilded Age The Last of Us The Morning Show WINNER: Succession

Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Comedy Series

Abbott Elementary Barry WINNER: The Bear Only Murders in the Building Ted Lasso

Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture

American Fiction Barbie The Color Purple Killers of the Flower Moon WINNER: Oppenheimer

SAG Life Achievement Award Recipient: Barbra Streisand

Outstanding Action Performance By a Stunt Ensemble in a Motion Picture

Barbie Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny John Wick Chapter 4 WINNER: Mission: Impossible, Dead Reckoning , Part I

Outstanding Action Performance by a Stunt Ensemble in a Television Series

Ashoka Barry Beef WINNER: The Last of Us The Mandalorian

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