We meet in an hour of change and challenge, in a decade of hope and fear, in an age of both knowledge and ignorance.
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 enterprised and overcome with answerable courage.
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.
If this capsuled history of our progress teaches us anything, it is that man in his quest for knowledge and progress is determined and cannot be deterred. The exploration of space will go ahead. It is one of the great adventures of all time.
We have had our failures. We'll 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.
For the eyes of the world now look into space, to the moon and to the planets beyond.
But why some say the moon? Why choose this as our goal? And they may well ask, why climb the highest mountain? Why 35 years ago fly the Atlantic?
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.
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.
12 сен 2024
