# 'The other things', Kennedy speech. Rice Stadium.

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-other-things-kennedy-speech-rice-stadium/632724>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [August 26, 2012, 4:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-other-things-kennedy-speech-rice-stadium/632724 "2012-08-26T16:03:29Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 4

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Andy\_L](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/c67d28/32.png) [@Andy\_L](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Andy_L)\
**Post date:** [August 26, 2012, 4:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-other-things-kennedy-speech-rice-stadium/632724/4 "2012-08-26T16:22:06Z")

</div>

> [@'The other things', Kennedy speech. Rice Stadium.](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-other-things-kennedy-speech-rice-stadium/632728/1):
>
> Hello good people, today seems as appropriate time as any to discuss President Kennedy’s ‘We choose to go to the Moon’ speech’  
> Specifically, in itallics: ‘We choose to go to the Moon, we choose to go to the Moon, (app[lause), 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.’
> 
> ‘The other things’?  
> I realise that his administration would have have had a number of problems to address, but are there any specific issues he was talking about?  
> By the by I always thought Gore Vidal was a little harsh on JFK but I suspect that’s a matter for another time.  
> Peter

The previous paragraph in Kennedy’s speech ([http://er.jsc.nasa.gov/seh/ricetalk.htm](http://er.jsc.nasa.gov/seh/ricetalk.htm)) reads

"There is no strife, no prejudice, no national conflict in outer space as yet. Its hazards are hostile to us all. Its conquest deserves the best of all mankind, and its opportunity for peaceful cooperation many never come again. 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? Why does Rice play Texas? "

So “the other things” are “climbing the highest mountain, flying the Atlantic, and playing Texas”.

---

_[View the full topic](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-other-things-kennedy-speech-rice-stadium/632724)._