JFK's Rice Speech on NASA TV Sept. 12

50 years ago, President John F. Kennedy delivered his historic "Space Challenge" speech to students and faculty at Rice University in Houston that included this now-iconic statement, "We choose to go to the moon not because it is easy but because it is hard." See and hear the speech in its entirety this Wednesday at 10:15 a.m. Central on NASA TV just as it was delivered that morning on September 12, 1962

• Category

  Science & Technology

[lyokofans]

And this is why our voters are idiots

[Andrew Robles]

I tend to agree with you, but I think you're being a bit harsh.

[Abricialio]

This president had a dream for the American people.. did the last presidents of the US had that too? NO!

[wildstar2199]

We went to the moon 9 times. Why would we fake it 9 times? Apollo 8,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17 and 18.

[MrTURBOJOHN]

Yes, but I'm not a voter, I'm from another country and my only intrest in america is science research...

[Jason Kreitzer]

No. The Soviets had a backwards, stupid, unproductive economically unsound system. They would have had no way to bring someone back from the moon because they had no money.

@v12tommy: Those people are morons. If it was so easy to fake, how come we never saw anything like it from any other countries.

[Kazuko Poirot]

wish obama would say :We choose to go to mars now, not because its easy, but because its friggin time XD

[thatwhoosy]

This was 50 years ago. We should be able to do much better today...

[tubester4567]

"We choose to go to the moon not because its easy, but because if we dont the soviets will do it and that makes us capitalists look bad and makes the communists look good" "we cant have that, I hereby write a blank cheque so we can really screw those communists".........maybe if the communists were still around we would be living on mars already. Nothing like a communist threat to get things done. When communism died in the 80's its been downhill ever since.

[Johnny Hopkinz]

There's already a huge plan in motion, that spans about 2 decades...All preparing us for an eventual manned expedition to mars in the 2030's. So don't get your hopes up for a Mars mission anytime soon sport.

[LaCeiba1924]

I hope that in my lifetime I will be able to see the colonization of the moon begin. Or at least see a man land on Mars. I will be one of the engineers to make that happen!

[v12tommy]

It amazes me and frustrates me that these days there is a larger number of people than ever before that don't believe we actually landed on the moon. They just can't fathom such an ambitious and daring project in modern times because we have all become a bunch of whiners and quitters rather than trying things that are hard. We need to stop dumbing down things and trying to make everything idiot proof, so that we can once again do great things like another moon landing.