I had a teacher once tell me, many years later, that this was a reference to Civil Rights legislation. Reading the speech, it is certainly not explicit. Kennedy does allude to ensuring peace, rather than war, in space, so perhaps that is the reference.
Considering he managed a nuclear test ban treaty to limit nukes in space, he arguably succeeded.
Incidentally, JFK was clear in that speech that, by end of the decade, he meant by the end of the sixties.
(Emphasis added)
Short answer, yes.
The context:
People had climbed Mt Everest in 1953, and flown across the Atlantic in 1927. I don’t know Rice University’s schedule but I assume they have played games against the University of Texas. (Kennedy’s speech was delivered at Rice so this reference was an inside joke; Texas is generally seen as a much stronger team than Rice.)
yes because people were mad the Soviets had the first satellite in space and also the first man in space. The US did not want to come in 2nd in the next major space goal.
Climb the highest mountain? That was in 1953.
Fly across the Atlantic? Heck, that was in 1919. It took eight more years to fly across the Atlantic** solo.**
Rice play Texas? Well, when JFK made his speech, Rice had won 19 of 48 games against Texas, including five of the previous nine.
For all we know, Kennedy might have meant, “it’s only hard to do if you think it is.”
There was certainly that feeling among the public.
And NASA budget requests were appropriated pretty easily because of this. I think NASA started some ancillary programs at this time, because they could get the money. And once Congress has spent a few million on it already, it’s hard to cut the program off.
Yeah, I always thought that the Rice v. Texas thing was a hopeless travesty, much like WVU against Penn State. We stand at 9-48-2.
But it Rice v. Texas was a gutty thing. Something that you pulled from deep inside yourself, it was tough, but you would win.
Interesting article about this on Fast Company, saying that Kennedy himself was having doubts by 1963, and that his death was what drove the whole project to continue to the end. (This is one of 50 articles in the 50 days to the Moon series.)
Since the OP has been answered can I ask a tag along question I’ve been wondering about lately?
Who’s idea was it to put a man on the moon anyway? Had the Soviets announced they were going to try so we wanted to beat them? Or did Kennedy just make up something better than putting a man in orbit. Or maybe NASA wanted to and asked Kennedy?
This article at The Space Review describes a meeting at the White House in the days following Gagarin’s first orbital flight. Kennedy had never shown much interest in space until then, but felt he had to do something to take back the advantage and show leadership. This meeting was on April 14th, and JFK’s speech to Congress was on May 25th.
Sorry, I didn’t quite answer the question. Apollo was already in early planning in 1961, as a follow-up to Mercury, but not specifically focused on lunar landings. The U.S.S.R. hadn’t announced an intention of landing people on the Moon, and apparently kept not announcing anything even once their own programs were under way. Although the N-1 rockets (and some of their failures) had been spotted by U.S. spy satellites, it was not officially acknowledged by the U.S.S.R. that there was a program for crewed lunar flights until the breakup of the Soviet Union.
I note that this has been commented on twice, but even with them I don’t understand what the question is referring to. /not snark
From the quotes of the speech already here in the thread:
In 1919, 32 men flew across the Atlantic. Alcock and Brown flew nonstop from Canada to Ireland, and the R34 British dirigible crossed from east to west with a crew of thirty, and a cat. Playing jazz on a gramophone.
Then the R34 turned around and flew back.
Lindbergh, my ass. Suck on it, Nazi-lover.
It’s not like Joe Kennedy’s son was going to hold that against somebody.
And Kennedy was clearly referring to Lindbergh. He made the speech in 1962 and he referred to a flight across the Atlantic 35 years ago, which was 1927.
I was only 7yrs old when that speech was made but the Soviet Union was already ahead of us in other things that were related to Space. You had to be alive to really pick up on fear (from adults) & as a child, I could feel it. He wanted it ASAP. For anyone interested, under the Freedom Act, JFK wrote a letter to the CIA demanding they turn over any info they had regarding any info they had to him & eventually to Soviet Union so we could work together. What makes this stand out is it was dated 10 days before JFK was assassinated. I have my own personal opinion. If others want to read about it, check out the letter, etc., you can Google it. Thank you for accepting me as a member. ������
What?
If I’m understanding you correctly, you’re saying Kennedy wanted the CIA to give him any information they had about the Soviet space program so we could share that information with the Soviets. Wouldn’t the Soviets already know what was happening in their space program?