'We choose to go to the Moon' renewed a goal set in 1961

John F. Kennedy’s “We choose to go to the Moon” speech, given at Rice University in Houston on 12 September 1962, did not set the lunar goal: it renewed one he had already put to Congress on 25 May 1961. Sixteen months on, he used it to sell a costly program to a public that was far from sold.

Kennedy spoke to about 40,000 people in Rice Stadium during a two-day tour of NASA sites, including the Marshall center in Huntsville and Cape Canaveral. Impressed by what he had seen, he recommitted the nation to landing on the Moon within the decade.

The speech is remembered for its idealism, but much of it was about the price tag. Kennedy told the crowd that the space budget had tripled since January 1961 to $5.4 billion a year, “a staggering sum, though somewhat less than we pay for cigarettes and cigars.” Spending would soon rise to more than 50 cents a week for every American.

He needed the persuasion. A Gallup poll in May 1961 found only 42% of Americans heartily endorsed the lunar bid, and critics questioned putting the Moon ahead of schools and welfare. Houston had been chosen the year before as the home of NASA’s new Manned Spacecraft Center, giving the city a direct stake.

“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.”

Just before that line, Kennedy asked, “Why does Rice play Texas?”, a joke about a lopsided football rivalry that he had written into the typed text by hand. From the stadium he went to a classified briefing at the Manned Spacecraft Center. Apollo 11 landed in July 1969, inside the deadline, though Kennedy did not live to see it.