In 1962, outside of Rice University in Houston, Texas, President John F. Kennedy gave a speech that not only agreed with America’s choice to land on the moon but also defended the large expense of the journey.

President Kennedy starts off his speech by thanking the staff at the university for allowing him to speak there and the audience for being present to listen. He goes on to start his speech declaring we need the city of Houston, Texas to become home to what is now none as NASA because of their knowledge, progress, and strength. “For we meet in an hour of…..both knowledge and ignorance.” he says, “The greater our knowledge increases, the greater our ignorance unfolds.”

President Kennedy had a way with words that some love and some do not like. He liked to emphasize what he was saying by speaking in phrases of four to six words at a time. While some dislike this, others believe this greatly stressed his points of how it was time to go to the moon and how it was necessary.

By condensing man’s history from 50,000 years to a half-century, Kennedy demonstrates how far man has come. “It is not surprising that some would have us stay where we are a little longer to rest, to wait.” he said. “But this country was not built by those who waited and rested and wished to look behind them.”

If any still doubted why we should go to the moon, or if the it was worth the great cost, Kennedy would have had them all believing by quoting George Mallory, a British explorer who died climbing Mt. Everest, “Because it is there.”