Kennedy @Rice +50

1. the much better speech is here,

   http://archive.org/details/…

   the president said that day,
    
   “Secondly, an additional 23 million dollars, together with 7 million
   dollars already available, will accelerate development of the Rover
   nuclear rocket. This gives promise of some day providing a means for
   even more exciting and ambitious exploration of space, perhaps beyond
   the moon, perhaps to the very end of the solar system itself”

   1. Worth noting that it was this line about Rover that elicited some applause. “We choose to go to the Moon in this decade” did not.  Of course this nuclear rocket line committed real money. The latter did not.

   2. Kennedy, speaking at a press confrence in 1962:

      ” 11.] Q. Mr. President, after your trip to Los Alamos Laboratory,New Mexico, is it your intention to ask for more money to speed upProject Rover, or for nuclear propulsion in space?
      THE PRESIDENT. We’re going to let these tests go on, of the reactor.These tests should be completed by July. If they are successful,then we will put more money into the program, which would involvethe Nerva and Rift, both the engine and the regular machine.We will wait until July, however, to see if these tests are successful.
      It should be understood that the nuclear rocket, even under the mostfavorable circumstances, would not play a role in any first lunar landing.This will not come into play until 1970 or ‘71. It would be useful forfurther trips to the moon or trips to Mars.”
       
      http://www.presidency.ucsb….

      Kennedy’s quip aside, about not being that interested in space, I still believe he had a difference vision on where the U.S. would be by 2012.

      1. We all did.

   3. Both speeches contain enough in them to inspire and provide vision to the current generation, but only if the full text is included instead of just cherry picking the Moon landing references which is what you normally hear quoted.  Kennedy said a lot more than that when he laid out a vision for the United States in space exploration.
       
      It’s easy to dismiss Kennedy’s speeches as being historic but irrelevant today because the Cold War is over, and besides we’ll never launch a project that massive again. The other extreme is the call by some that all we need is for a President to do what Kennedy did and set a new goal with an equally aggressive deadline. Understandably people who advocate this are derided as “living in the past glories”.

      But that doesn’t mean that the past is void of inspiration.  Now is as good a time as any to go back to the beginning, when we had a vision, when we saw ourselves as a space-faring nation.  Go back and figure out where it went wrong.  When you read Kennedy’s speeches again, you find so much good, but in hindsight you do find one thing wrong – the call to land on the Moon by the end of the decade.  Not that Kennedy was wrong for setting that goal, in the Cold War struggle that dominated his presidency he may have had no other choice.  But in terms of becoming a space-faring nation, that decision led unfortunately to the very predictable loss of willpower by congress and by the American people to continue with the vision.  We probably did the same thing with the Space Shuttle, it was too much too soon.  It’s like losing weight, don’t try to lose too much at once or you’ll give up.  Or exercise, don’t try to do too much when you start out or you’ll hurt yourself and it will be a setback.

      I think a lot of good could come from educating people including our elected officials on what Kennedy actually said, most of whom think that he just said let’s go to the Moon in this decade.  Bring them back to a time when we had a vision, explain what the vision was, point out where with good intentions we went off track, but then explain that the vision itself still exists, and that it can, and should continue to be pursued.

2. Kennedy thought the extreme cost and nationalistic needs would force cooperation, thus the future was spoken for. ASTP happened later, smaller … and America overwhelmed and devastated within Kennedy’s decade, and with budget he didn’t believe would be supplied.

   We still draw the wrong conclusions from this speech.

   The differences between now and then:

    … the Moon was out of reach but something we could risk reaching for. Stretching for it caused us to grow. But not enough to afford staying.

    … the Moon is within reach of multiple space programs, including perhaps commercial ones besides government. Stretching for it this time we might be able to begin a “going concern”, something that would return more than a few hundred pounds of rocks and winning a global soap box derby of world powers.

   Being able to stay this time, because of a viable, affordable reason to stay.

   And if you succeed at viability against rivals who cannot as the US did before, you win your beachhead beyond earth.

3. The speech was great for its proposal and vision, well planned,well thought out. Kennedy would scoff at Obama if he were alive today.

   1. And Kennedy …  this progressive, liberal, democratic President would what …. praise Romney or Bush and the republicans while he is scoffing at a fellow democrat?

      I highly doubt he would scoff at President Obama.

4. “I envision President Obama at Rice University on the 50th anniversary of Kennedy’s speech, laying out a renewed vision.”

   <sigh>

   “but this city of Houston, this State of Texas, this country of the United States was not built by those  … who wished to look behind them. This country was conquered by those who moved forward–and so will space.”

   Kennedy invoked the conquest of Everest. But it wasn’t to challenge the US to go back to Everest.

   —

   Aside: I’d heard the forever quoted part of that speech “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”, hundreds of times, for years before I got hold of a copy of the whole speech and found out what the “other things” were. I had always assumed it was other goals he’d laid out in his inauguration. Instead the “other things” were climbing Everest and a joke about the Rice football team’s losing streak. Somehow made me sad to read that. That, even then, Apollo was being compared with just planting a flag, or beating a rival in a pointless game.

5. Being that there are about 9 hours left before its September 13, I wouldn’t hold my breath on expecting Obama to present today at Rice a Vision for NASA’s future or any other achievable grand undertaking. He is not in the same league with Kennedy.

Comments are closed.