President John F. Kennedy speaking to an audience in the football stadium at Rice University in Houston, September 12, 1962. Kennedy made the public case for why the U.S. should try a Moon shot. NASA photo.
Kennedy’s speech at Rice University, “We Choose to Go to the Moon,” was delivered in the football stadium (not nearly full), on September 12, 1962.
Obviously, that was back before global warming held such a tight death grip on Texas (it’s so bad here, even Rick Perry is trying to move north, out of the state).
Day in and day out, Kennedy’s speech, the text, the audio, and sources of commentary on it, are among the most popular of the nearly 5,000 posts at Millard Fillmore’s Bathtub. Go see why:
- Encore quote of the moment: John Kennedy, “We choose to go to the Moon.”
- NASA Administrator Charles Bolden’s comments on the 50th anniversary of Kennedy’s speech at Rice
- NASA’s page on the speech, with sources for even more
September 12, 1962, was also the ninth anniversary of JFK’s marriage to Jacqueline Bouvier. She let him go out of town to talk rockets?
Anything for the nation, I suppose.
More:
- Jeffrey Sachs: To Move the World: JFK’s Quest for Peace (Excerpt) (huffingtonpost.com)
- Quote Assignment (mmswimmer12.wordpress.com)
- JFK: 50 years later “There’s still a healing going on” (star-telegram.com)
- Jeffrey Sachs: To Move the World: JFK’s Quest for Peace (Part Two) (huffingtonpost.com)
Moonwalking astronaut salutes the U.S. flag on the Moon. Twelve people went to the Moon, all of them in the U.S. space program run by NASA. (My photo source does not identify this astronaut.)
Millard Fillmore's Bathtub 