“Earth is the cradle of humanity, but one cannot live in a cradle forever.” John F. Kennedy gave a speech at Rice University entitled “To the Moon” in the summer of 1962. Kennedy’s main point was to convince the audience that it is important that America gets a man on the moon as soon as possible, and he’s convincing the American taxpayer that it is important that the government spends millions of dollars on the national space program, so America can be ahead of Russia in the space race. John F. Kennedy gave this speech at Rice University in the outdoor football stadium. Kennedy was the 35th president, and served while America was in a cold war with Russia, who had just sent a satellite into space just 5 years earlier. Russia was sending increasingly …show more content…
For example, in one section of his speech Kennedy condenses 50,000 years of humanity into half a century. He says that following the timeline of only 50 years, for the first 40 years humans were only cavemen. He also states that “only five years ago man learned to write and use a cart with wheels” (“To the Moon”). He talks about how quickly humanity has progressed and how quickly it will continue to progress. Kennedy says “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 the race for space” (“To the Moon”). Kennedy is informing everyone that even though right now America is on number one is almost everything, if America doesn’t make it to space first we will be left in the dust. Kennedy uses this structure in his speech to further prove his point that the money spent on the space program will be money well spent and the taxpayers should not be concerned about their hard-earned money going to waste. This section of Kennedy’s speech evokes a feeling of amazement, because he illustrates how far humanity has come and how fast