MISSION MOON
JFK’s historic speech at Rice cemented legacy as ‘Space President’
Our special anniversary coverage of the July 20, 1969, moon landing continues today with a look at President John F. Kennedy’s famous speech about the moon at Rice University in 1962.
Follow the Mission Moon series at houstonchronicle.com/missionmoon.
Decked out in a suit in the Texas heat on a September day in 1962, President John F. Kennedy stood in front of about 40,000 people in Rice University’s football stadium to deliver one of the most famous speeches in American history. His goal, he said, was for the United States to land on the moon by the end of the decade.
“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?” Kennedy asked rhetorically in his heavy Massachusetts accent. “Why does Rice play Texas?”
The crowd erupted in knowing laughter at the local football-related comparison, and then, Kennedy delivered his most notable line: “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.”
Kennedy’s speech at Rice has since been lauded for its enthusiasm, its poetic delivery, and locally, for its noteworthy inclusion of both Houston and Texas in their roles in space exploration, according to Douglas Brinkley, a Rice professor and author of the best-selling book “American Moonshot: John F. Kennedy and the Great Space Race.”
Quotes from Kennedy’s speech have been used by techies around the world for its determination.
“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,” Kennedy concluded on that day in Houston almost 60 years ago.
The Rice speech eclipsed any that Kennedy had given, including his inaugural address, Brinkley said. It gave
him the mantle of being the “Space President,” a dream that was fulfilled after astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first people to walk on the moon on July 20, 1969.
But as eloquent and inspiring as the 35th president’s words were, their purpose was a deliberate power play, the historian said, and it wasn’t Kennedy’s first mention of a lunar mission.
Kennedy delivered his first, less-exciting talk about going to the moon in 1961 during a joint session of Congress, just weeks after Soviet Union astronaut Yuri Gagarin became the first person to fly in space and orbit the Earth.
“It wasn’t beautiful, flowery rhetoric. It was boilerplate policy speech,” Brinkley said. “There was no magic.”
Kennedy’s speech at Rice, however, was a grandiose pledge, a proposal to America, a pitch intended to generate excitement while also communicating the challenge the country would take on together as well as the billions of dollars it would cost for America to win the Space Race.
“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,” Kennedy assured his audience, before announcing that space expenditures would rise, costing 50 cents per week for every American resident.
Though deemed uplifting and aspirational, the speech was also political, and “NASA was a winning ticket,” Brinkley said.
The “Race to Space” speech came ahead of the midterm elections that November and during a time when the country was in celebration of major space accomplishments, including America’s orbit around the Earth in February 1962. The Mercury 7 astronauts, including John Glenn, were considered instant heroes, and Kennedy, glad to be at the center of the space exploration frontier, came to Houston to “soak it all up.”
“Something as large as the moonshot takes presidential leadership, and Kennedy exerted that at the Rice football stadium,” Brinkley said.
But there are questions about whether Kennedy’s speech would have had the same enduring effect if the lunar landing had not happened. “It would be a good speech and an interesting one, but it would have been forgotten,” Brinkley said.
But they did land on the moon. And that day at Rice, Brinkley said, produced “a brilliantly written (speech) aimed at lasting for the ages.”
“Something as large as the moonshot takes presidential leadership, and Kennedy exerted that at the Rice football stadium.”
— Douglas Brinkley, Rice University professor and best-selling author