肯尼迪登月演讲《We choo to go to the moon》英文原文

2024年2月15日发(作者：大学学习委员)

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President Pitzer, Mr. Vice President, Governor, Congressman Thomas, Senator

Wiley, and Congressman Miller, Mr. Webb, Mr. Bell, scientists, distinguished guests,

and ladies and gentlemen:

I appreciate your president having made me an honorary visiting professor,

and I will assure you that my first lecture will be very brief.

I am delighted to be here and I'm particularly delighted to be here on this

occasion.

We meet at a college noted for knowledge, in a city noted for progress, in a

state noted for strength, and we stand in need of all three, for we meet in an hour

of change and challenge, in a decade of hope and fear, in an age of both

knowledge and ignorance. The greater our knowledge increas, the greater our

ignorance unfolds.

Despite the striking fact that most of the scientists that the world has ever

known are alive and working today, despite the fact that this Nation's own scientific

manpower is doubling every 12 years in a rate of growth more than three times

that of our population as a whole, despite that, the vast stretches of the unknown

and the unanswered and the unfinished still far outstrip our collective

comprehension.

No man can fully grasp how far and how fast we have come, but conden, if

you will, the 50,000 years of man's recorded history in a time span of but a

half-century. Stated in the terms, we know very little about the first 40 years,

except at the end of them advanced man had learned to u the skins of animals to

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cover them. Then about 10 years ago, under this standard, man emerged from his

caves to construct other kinds of shelter. Only five years ago man learned to write

and u a cart with wheels. Christianity began less than two years ago. The printing

press came this year, and then less than two months ago, during this whole 50-year

span of human history, the steam engine provided a new source of power. Newton

explored the meaning of gravity. Last month electric lights and telephones and

automobiles and airplanes became available. Only last week did we develop

penicillin and television and nuclear power, and now if America's new spacecraft

succeeds in reaching Venus, we will have literally reached the stars before midnight

tonight.

This is a breathtaking pace, and such a pace cannot help but create new ills as

it dispels old, new ignorance, new problems, new dangers. Surely the opening

vistas of space promi high costs and hardships, as well as high reward.

So it is not surprising that some would have us stay where we are a little longer

to rest, to wait. But this city of Houston, this state of Texas, this country of the

United States was not built by tho who waited and rested and wished to look

behind them. This country was conquered by tho who moved forward--and so

will space.

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 enterprid and overcome with answerable courage.

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If this capsule 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, whether we join in it or not, and it is one of the

great adventures of all time, and no nation which expects to be the leader of other

nations can expect to stay behind in this race for space.

Tho who came before us made certain that this country rode the first waves

of the industrial revolution, the first waves of modern invention, and the first wave

of nuclear power, and this generation does not intend to founder in the backwash

of the coming age of space. We mean to be a part of it--we mean to lead it. For the

eyes of the world now look into space, to the moon and to the planets beyond, and

we have vowed that we shall not e it governed by a hostile flag of conquest, but

by a banner of freedom and peace. We have vowed that we shall not e space

filled with weapons of mass destruction, but with instruments of knowledge and

understanding.

Yet the vows of this Nation can only be fulfilled if we in this Nation are first,

and, therefore, we intend to be first. In short, our leadership in science and industry,

our hopes for peace and curity, our obligations to ourlves as well as others, all

require us to make this effort, to solve the mysteries, to solve them for the good

of all men, and to become the world's leading space-faring nation.

We t sail on this new a becau there is new knowledge to be gained, and

new rights to be won, and they must be won and ud for the progress of all

people. For space science, like nuclear science and all technology, has no

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conscience of its own. Whether it will become a force for good or ill depends on

man, and only if the United States occupies a position of pre-eminence can we help

decide whether this new ocean will be a a of peace or a new terrifying theater of

war. I do not say that we should or will go unprotected against the hostile misu of

space any more than we go unprotected against the hostile u of land or a, but I

do say that space can be explored and mastered without feeding the fires of war,

without repeating the mistakes that man has made in extending his writ around

this globe of ours.

There is no strife, no prejudice, no national conflict in outer space as yet. Its

hazards are hostile to us all. Its conquest derves the best of all mankind, and its

opportunity for peaceful cooperation may never come again. But why, some say,

the moon? Why choo 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?

We choo to go to the moon. We choo to go to the moon in this decade

and do the other things, not becau they are easy, but becau they are hard,

becau that goal will rve to organize and measure the best of our energies and

skills, becau that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are

unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too.

It is for the reasons that I regard the decision last year to shift our efforts in

space from low to high gear as among the most important decisions that will be

made during my incumbency in the office of the Presidency.

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In the last 24 hours we have en facilities now being created for the greatest

and most complex exploration in man's history. We have felt the ground shake and

the air shattered by the testing of a Saturn C-1 booster rocket, many times as

powerful as the Atlas which launched John Glenn, generating power equivalent to

10,000 automobiles with their accelerators on the floor. We have en the site

where five F-1 rocket engines, each one as powerful as all eight engines of the

Saturn combined, will be clustered together to make the advanced Saturn missile,

asmbled in a new building to be built at Cape Canaveral as tall as a 48-storey

structure, as wide as a city block, and as long as two lengths of this field.

Within the last 19 months at least 45 satellites have circled the earth. Some

40 of them were made in the United States of America and they were far more

sophisticated and supplied far more knowledge to the people of the world than

tho of the Soviet Union.

The Mariner spacecraft now on its way to Venus is the most intricate

instrument in the history of space science. The accuracy of that shot is comparable

to firing a missile from Cape Canaveral and dropping it in this stadium between the

40-yard lines.

Transit satellites are helping our ships at a to steer a safer cour. Tiros

satellites have given us unprecedented warnings of hurricanes and storms, and will

do the same for forest fires and icebergs.

We have had our failures, but so have others, even if they do not admit them.

And they may be less public.

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To be sure, we are behind, and will 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.

The growth of our science and education will be enriched by new knowledge

of our univer and environment, by new techniques of learning and mapping and

obrvation, by new tools and computers for industry, medicine, the home as well

as the school. Technical institutions, such as Rice, will reap the harvest of the

gains.

And finally, the space effort itlf, while still in its infancy, has already created a

great number of new companies, and tens of thousands of new jobs. Space and

related industries are generating new demands in investment and skilled personnel,

and this city and this state, and this region, will share greatly in this growth. What

was once the furthest outpost on the old frontier of the West will be the furthest

outpost on the new frontier of science and space. Houston, your city of Houston,

with its Manned Spacecraft Center, will become the heart of a large scientific and

engineering community. During the next 5 years the National Aeronautics and

Space Administration expects to double the number of scientists and engineers in

this area, to increa its outlays for salaries and expens to $60 million a year; to

invest some $200 million in plant and laboratory facilities; and to direct or contract

for new space efforts over $1 billion from this center in this city.

To be sure, all this costs us all a good deal of money. This year's space budget

is three times what it was in January 1961, and it is greater than the space budget of

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the previous eight years combined. That budget now stands at $5,400 million a

year--a staggering sum, though somewhat less than we pay for cigarettes and

cigars every year. Space expenditures will soon ri some more, from 40 cents per

person per week to more than 50 cents a week for every man, woman and child in

the United States, for we have given this program a high national priority--even

though I realize that this is in some measure an act of faith and vision, for we do not

now know what benefits await us. But if I were to say, my fellow citizens, that we

shall nd to the moon, 240,000 miles away from the control station in Houston, a

giant rocket more than 300 feet tall, the length of this football field, made of new

metal alloys, some of which have not yet been invented, capable of standing heat

and stress veral times more than have ever been experienced, fitted together

with a precision better than the finest watch, carrying all the equipment needed for

propulsion, guidance, control, communications, food and survival, on an untried

mission, to an unknown celestial body, and then return it safely to earth,

re-entering the atmosphere at speeds of over 25,000 miles per hour, causing heat

about half that of the temperature of the sun--almost as hot as it is here

today--and do all this, and do it right, and do it first before this decade is out--then

we must be bold.

I'm the one who is doing all the work, so we just want you to stay cool for a

minute.

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However, I think we're going to do it, and I think that we must pay what needs

to be paid. I don't think we ought to waste any money, but I think we ought to do

the job. And this will be done in the decade of the Sixties. It may be done while

some of you are still here at school at this college and university. It will be done

during the terms of office of some of the people who sit here on this platform. But

it will be done. And it will be done before the end of this decade.

And I am delighted that this university is playing a part in putting a man on the

moon as part of a great national effort of the United States of America.

Many years ago the great British explorer George Mallory, who was to die on

Mount Everest, was asked why did he want to climb it. He said, "Becau it is there."

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

t sail we ask God's blessing on the most hazardous and dangerous and greatest

adventure on which man has ever embarked.

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