Kennedy and the Space Race
by kyle batra
8/29/2017
In September of 1962, President John F. Kennedy gave his famous speech about how America needed to go into space and travel to the Moon. Although he discusses scientific progress, innovation, and America’s responsibility to lead other nations in progress (“We choose to go to the Moon… not because they are easy, but because they are hard” (Kennedy)). However, no matter how much people glorify Armstrong’s first step on the Moon, America’s main reasons for exploring space were not the values Kennedy mentioned in his speech. First off, the engineers and scientists who designed and built the Saturn V and Apollo rockets were not even American. They were German Nazi missile specialists like Wernher von Braun (and 1600 other scientists and engineers) who were brought to America in the covert Operation Paperclip. And the main motivation for building the rockets was not America’s drive for knowledge; instead, the cause was a blinking radio signal in the sky, Sputnik 1. Any human, American, Russian, or from any other country could tune their radio as Sputnik flew overhead to hear a rhythmic beep mixed in with the other white noise, which scared Americans to bits.
The Cold War between the United States and Russia was already in a state of high tension when Russia achieved spaceflight with their satellite Sputnik, and not soon after human space flight. In this arms race, America was severely behind Russia in technology, and with every successful Russian space launch, every American feared that a new weapon was being sent up. This is the reason why Nazi scientists were being recruited and why Kennedy stated that Americans had to get to the Moon. America had to compete with Russia in this technology race not just for scientific progress, but for the safety of the country.
Kennedy’s speech, however, is extremely interesting because it omits the most important reason why America needs to go into space on purpose. Instead, using implied presidential ethos, and appeals to logos and pathos in his speech, Kennedy is able to convince the country that getting into space is important without promoting fear by discussing the inherent Russian threat. He uses logos by quoting and referring to great scientists and their inventions and states that getting to the Moon would be another important scientific milestone. Next, Kennedy uses pathos by appealing to the entire American population, implying that it is their patriotic duty to help America achieve this milestone. Not only that, he appeals to American nationalism by stating that America has to achieve it first like the country has with other innovations. “Yet the vows of this Nation can only be fulfilled if we in this Nation are first, and, therefore, we intend to be first” (Kennedy).
Kennedy’s Moon speech is one of the most famous American speeches in American history, and it achieved its goal to persuade the American public to go to the Moon, with urgency (Apollo 13 landed in 1969 and beat Russia), and even did it without increasing public fear of Russia’s technological and military capabilities by never mentioning Russia in the speech.
Works Cited
Kennedy, John F. “JOHN KENNEDY'S RICE STADIUM MOON SPEECH.” NASA, NASA, er.jsc.nasa.gov/seh/ricetalk.htm. Accessed 29 Aug. 2017