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+---
+title: John F. Kennedy Address at Rice University on the Space Effort
+published: 2024-07-28
+description: The great speech that inspired thousands of minds for Space Exploration on Sept. 12, 1962
+image: './cover.png'
+tags: [Ethics]
+category: Theory
+draft: false
+---
+
+<iframe width="100%" height="468" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/WZyRbnpGyzQ?si=9sbI4-VGjrrA6UcM" title="President Kennedy's Speech at Rice University" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen></iframe>
+
+President Pitzer, Mr. Vice President, Governor, Congressman Thomas, Senator Wiley, and Congressman Miller, Mr. Webb. Mr.
+Bell, scientists, distinguished guests, and ladies and gentlemen:
+
+I appreciate your president having made me an honorary visiting professor, and I will assure you that my first lecture
+will be very brief. I am delighted to be here and I'm particularly delighted to be here on this occasion.
+
+We meet at a college noted for knowledge, in a city noted for progress, in a State noted for strength, and we stand in
+need of all three, for we meet in an hour of change and challenge, in a decade of hope and fear, in an age of both
+knowledge and ignorance. The greater our knowledge increases, the greater our ignorance unfolds.
+
+Despite the striking fact that most of the scientists that the world has ever known are alive and working today, despite
+the fact that this Nation's own scientific manpower is doubling every 12 years in a rate of growth more than three times
+that of our population as a whole, despite that, the vast stretches of the unknown and the unanswered and the unfinished
+still far out-strip our collective comprehension.
+
+No man can fully grasp how far and how fast we have come, but condense, if you will, the 50,000 years of man's recorded
+history in a time span of but a half century. Stated in these terms, we know very little about the first 40 years,
+except at the end of them advanced man had learned to use the skins of animals to cover them. Then about 10 years ago,
+under this standard, man emerged from his caves to construct other kinds of shelter. Only 5 years ago man learned to
+write and use a cart with wheels. Christianity began less than 2 years ago. The printing press came this year, and then
+less than 2 months ago, during this whole 50-year span of human history, the steam engine provided a new source of
+power.
+
+Newton explored the meaning of gravity. Last month electric lights and telephones and automobiles and airplanes became
+available. Only last week did we develop penicillin and television and nuclear power, and now if America's new
+spacecraft succeeds in reaching Venus, we will have literally reached the stars before midnight tonight.
+
+This is a breathtaking pace, and such a pace cannot help but create new ills as it dispels old, new ignorance, new
+problems, new dangers. Surely the opening vistas of space promise high costs and hardships, as well as high reward.
+
+So it is not surprising that some would have us stay where we are a little longer to rest, to wait. But this city of
+Houston, this State of Texas, this country of the United States was not built by those who waited and rested and wished
+to look behind them. This country was conquered by those who moved forward-and so will space.
+
+William Bradford, speaking in 1630 of the founding of the Plymouth Bay Colony, said that all great and honorable actions
+are accompanied with great difficulties, and both must be enterprised and overcome with answerable courage.
+
+If this capsule history of our progress teaches us anything, it is that man, in his quest for knowledge and progress, is
+determined and cannot be deterred. The exploration of space will go ahead, whether we join in it or not, and it is one
+of the great adventures of all time, and no nation which expects to be the leader of other nations can expect to stay
+behind in this race for space.
+
+Those who came before us made certain that this country rode the first waves of the industrial revolutions, the first
+waves of modern invention, and the first wave of nuclear power, and this generation does not intend to founder in the
+backwash of the coming age of space. We mean to be a part of it - we mean to lead it. For the eyes of the world now look
+into space, to the moon and to the planets beyond, and we have vowed that we shall not see it governed by a hostile flag
+of conquest, but by a banner of freedom and peace. We have vowed that we shall not see space filled with weapons of mass
+destruction, but with instruments of knowledge and understanding.
+
+Yet the vows of this Nation can only be fulfilled if we in this Nation are first, and, therefore, we intend to be first.
+In short, our leadership in science and in industry, our hopes for peace and security, our obligations to ourselves as
+well as others, all require us to make this effort, to solve these mysteries, to solve them for the good of all men, and
+to become the world's leading space-faring nation.
+
+We set sail on this new sea because there is new knowledge to be gained, and new rights to be won, and they must be won
+and used for the progress of all people. For space science, like nuclear science and all technology, has no conscience
+of its own. Whether it will become a force for good or ill depends on man, and only if the United States occupies a
+position of pre-eminence can we help decide whether this new ocean will be a sea of peace or a new terrifying theater of
+war. I do not say that we should or will go unprotected against the hostile misuse of space any more than we go
+unprotected against the hostile use of land or sea, but I do say that space can be explored and mastered without feeding
+the fires of war, without repeating the mistakes that man has made in extending his writ around this globe of ours.
+
+There is no strife, no prejudice, no national conflict in outer space as yet. Its hazards are hostile to us all. Its
+conquest deserves the best of all mankind, and its opportunity for peaceful cooperation may never come again. But why,
+some say, the moon? Why choose this as our goal? And they may well ask why climb the highest mountain. Why, 35 years
+ago, fly the Atlantic? Why does Rice play Texas?
+
+We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are
+easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and
+skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we
+intend to win, and the others, too.
+
+It is for these reasons that I regard the decision last year to shift our efforts in space from low to high gear as
+among the most important decisions that will be made during my incumbency in the Office of the Presidency.
+
+In the last 24 hours we have seen facilities now being created for the greatest and most complex exploration in man's
+history. We have felt the ground shake and the air shattered by the testing of a Saturn C-1 booster rocket, many times
+as powerful as the Atlas which launched John Glenn, generating power equivalent to 10,000 automobiles with their
+accelerators on the floor. We have seen the site where five F-1 rocket engines, each one as powerful as all eight
+engines of the Saturn combined, will be clustered together to make the advanced Saturn missile, assembled in a new
+building to be built at Cape Canaveral as tall as a 48-story structure, as wide as a city block, and as long as two
+lengths of this field.
+
+Within these last 19 months at least 45 satellites have circled the earth. Some 40 of them were "made in the United
+States of America" and they were far more sophisticated and supplied far more knowledge to the people of the world than
+those of the Soviet Union.
+
+The Mariner spacecraft now on its way to Venus is the most intricate instrument in the history of space science. The
+accuracy of that shot is comparable to firing a missile from Cape Canaveral and dropping it in this stadium between the
+40-yard lines.
+
+Transit satellites are helping our ships at sea to steer a safer course. Tiros satellites have given us unprecedented
+warnings of hurricanes and storms, and will do the same for forest fires and icebergs.
+
+We have had our failures, but so have others, even if they do not admit them. And they may be less public.
+
+To be sure, we are behind, and will be behind for some time in manned flight. But we do not intend to stay behind, and
+in this decade we shall make up and move ahead.
+
+The growth of our science and education will be enriched by new knowledge of our universe and environment, by new
+techniques of learning and mapping and observation, by new tools and computers for industry, medicine, the home as well
+as the school. Technical institutions, such as Rice, will reap the harvest of these gains.
+
+And finally, the space effort itself, while still in its infancy, has already created a great number of new companies,
+and tens of thousands of new jobs. Space and related industries are generating new demands in investment and skilled
+personnel, and this city and this State, and this region, will share greatly in this growth. What was once the furthest
+outpost on the old frontier of the West will be the furthest outpost on the new frontier of science and space. Houston,
+your City of Houston, with its Manned Spacecraft Center, will become the heart of a large scientific and engineering
+community. During the next 5 years the National Aeronautics and Space Administration expects to double the number of
+scientists and engineers in this area, to increase its outlays for salaries and expenses to $60 million a year; to
+invest some $200 million in plant and laboratory facilities; and to direct or contract for new space efforts over $1
+billion from this Center in this City.
+
+To be sure, all this costs us all a good deal of money. This year's space budget is three times what it was in January
+1961, and it is greater than the space budget of the previous 8 years combined. That budget now stands at $5,400 million
+a year-a staggering sum, though somewhat less than we pay for cigarettes and cigars every year. Space expenditures will
+soon rise some more from 40 cents per person per week to more than 50 cents a week for every man, woman, and child in
+the United States, for we have given this program a high national priority even though I realize that this is in some
+measure an act of faith and vision, for we do not now know what benefits await us. But if I were to say, my fellow
+citizens, that we shall send to the moon, 240,000 miles away from the control station in Houston, a giant rocket more
+than 300 feet tall, the length of this football field, made of new metal alloys, some of which have not yet been
+invented, capable of standing heat and stresses several times more than have ever been experienced, fitted together with
+a precision better than the finest watch, carrying all the equipment needed for propulsion, guidance, control,
+communications, food and survival, on an untried mission, to an unknown celestial body, and then return it safely to
+earth, reentering the atmosphere at speeds of over 25,000 miles per hour, causing heat about half that of the
+temperature of the sun - almost as hot as it is here today - and do all this, and do it right, and do it first before
+this decade is out, then we must be bold.
+
+I'm the one who is doing all the work, so we just want you to stay cool for a minute.
+
+However, I think we're going to do it, and I think that we must pay what needs to be paid. I don't think we ought to
+waste any money, but I think we ought to do the job. And this will be done in the decade of the sixties. It may be done
+while some of you are still here at school at this college and university. It will be done during the terms of office of
+some of the people who sit here on this platform. But it will be done. And it will be done before the end of this
+decade.
+
+I am delighted that this university is playing a part in putting a man on the moon as part of a great national effort of
+the United States of America.
+
+Many years ago the great British explorer George Mallory, who was to die on Mount Everest, was asked why did he want to
+climb it. He said, "Because it is there."
+
+Well, space is there, and we're going to climb it, and the moon and the planets are there, and new hopes for knowledge
+and peace are there. And, therefore, as we set sail we ask God's blessing on the most hazardous and dangerous and
+greatest adventure on which man has ever embarked.
+
+Thank you.
+
+NOTE: The President spoke in the Rice University Stadium at 10 a.m.
+
+In his opening words he referred to Dr. K. S. Pitzer, President of the University, Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson,
+Governor Price Daniel of Texas, Representative Albert Thomas of Texas, Senator Alexander Wiley of Wisconsin,
+Representative George P. Miller of California, James E. Webb, Administrator, National Aeronautics and Space
+Administration., David E. Bell, Director of the Bureau of the Budget.
+
+Source: [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States, v. 1, 1962, pp. 669-670](https://www.govinfo.gov/app/details/PPP-1962-book1).