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 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.
President John F. Kennedy
I was a year and almost a month old when these words were spoken. They stir emotion, excitement and vision; hope and direction. As I read them for this post, I wept quietly.
"...not because they are easy, but because they are hard..."
It was not advanced robotics and transistorized super computers that allowed Mercury, Gemini and Apollo: it was grit, sweat, and knowledge of how to compute with a
slide rule. It was during a time of social upheaval, physical and brutal
de facto segregation and the struggle for Civil Rights. It was during an era a short-lived cancelled show -
Star Trek - which later became a cult phenomenon in that we might
actually survive the dark corollary of the
Drake Equation. It was before our politicians became more concerned with job security than problem-solving; speaking-to-the-base in soundbite talking points versus reaching consensus. It was before a cottage industry of standardized testing gave us fifty inane yardsticks without a national standard but a nebulous goal birthed of sloganeering: No Child Left Behind (or, No Child's Behind Left).
It was before our answers had "Google" in the lexicon; post "Sputnik moment" of fear turned inspiration, when we plunged head long with only one driving directive:
"First star on the right and straight on until morning!" Peter Pan
