President John F. Kennedy’s September 12, 1962 Moon Address at Rice University came on the car radio recently and, despite temperatures below freezing in D.C., the speech sent warm shivers down my spine while driving through the winter night; reminding me that the United States will soon complete the first crewed mission around the moon since 1972, with an eventual landing very possible before the end of the second Trump Administration.

Kennedy said many memorable things in his speech, including:

"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, 'Because it is there.'We choose to go to the Moon. 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.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.Space is there, and we’re going to climb it, and the Moon and the planets are........

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