And now, ladies and gentlemen, the President of the United States.
Thank you.
President Kitzin, Mr. Vice President, Governor,
President Kitzin, Mr. President,
President Kitzin, Mr. Vice President,
President Pitzer, Mr. Vice President, Governor, Congressman Thomas, Senator Wiley and Congressman
Miller, Mr. Webb, Mr. Bell, scientists, distinguished guests, 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 men 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 move 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
enterprise and overcome with answerable courage.
this capsule history of our progress teaches us anything. It is that man and 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 preeminence 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?
Five 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're willing
to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one 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, C1 booster
rocket.
many times as powerful as the Atlas which launched John Glenn, generating power equivalents
to 10,000 automobiles with their accelerator 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.
The Mariner spacecraft now, in 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.
Tireless 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.
You'll 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.
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, and the whole 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 and 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 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 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
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 on 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's doing all the work, so we get going 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.
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.
Please remain standing. God of all space, who has set the stars in their courses, and
who does also dwell in the human heart. God of the light years, infinite beyond infinity,
Who does also give meaning to our brief years?
To thee we turn, for thy benediction.
We give thee thanks, O God, for the rights with which thou hast endowed us, for the freedoms
which Americans have secured and cherished and shared, for the love of truth and the
dreams of adventure which propel pioneers out into space.
We are grateful for the lofty vision of our president, for the intelligence and the eloquence
which give wings to his words.
Guide and protect him, O Father, and all
who are entrusted with the destiny of this great nation.
May thy blessing rest upon us all.
Bless us in our homes, in our schools,
in our laboratories, our farms, our factories,
our space capsules.
Prosper us in our cities and our states.
Make our country a worthy leader of the free world.
And grant the blessings of peace to all mankind.
Army.
Robert.