约翰肯尼迪《我们选择登月》英语演讲稿.docx

1、约翰肯尼迪我们选择登月英语演讲稿约翰肯尼迪我们选择登月英语演讲稿n this 1962 speech given at Rice University in Houston, Texas, President John F. Kennedyreaffirmed Americas commitment to landing a man on the moon before the end of the 1960s.The President spoke in philosophical terms about the need to solve the mysteries of spaceand

2、 also defended the enormous expense of the space program.President pitzer Mr. Vice President, Governor, Congressman Thomas, Senator Wiley, andCongressman Miller, Mr. Webb, Mr. Bell, scientists, distinguished guests, and ladies andgentlemen:I appreciate your president having made me an honorary visit

3、ing professor, and I will assureyou that my first lecture will be very brief.I am delighted to be here and Im 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 forstrength, and we stand in need of all three, fo

4、r we meet in an hour of change and challenge, ina decade of hope and fear, in an age of both knowledge and ignorance. The greater ourknowledge increases, the greater our ignorance unfolds.Despite the striking fact that most of the scientists that the world has ever known are alive andworking today,

5、despite the fact that this Nations own scientific manpower is doubling every 12years in a rate of growth more than three times that of our population as a whole, despitethat, the vast stretches of the unknown and the unanswered and the unfinished still faroutstrip our collective comprehension.No man

6、 can fully grasp how far and how fast we have come, but condense, if you will, the50,000 years of mans recorded history in a time span of but a half-century. Stated in theseterms, we know very little about the first 40 years, except at the end of them advanced manhad learned to use the skins of anim

7、als to cover them. Then about 10 years ago, under thisstandard, man emerged from his caves to construct other kinds of shelter. Only five years agoman learned to write and use a cart with wheels. Christianity began less than two years ago.The printing press came this year, and then less than two mon

8、ths ago, during this whole 50-year span of human history, the steam engine provided a new source of power. Newtonexplored the meaning of gravity. Last month electric lights and telephones and automobilesand airplanes became available. Only last week did we develop penicillin and television andnuclea

9、r power, and now if Americas new spacecraft succeeds in reaching Venus, we will haveliterally 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 o

10、f space promise highcosts 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 bythose who waited and rested and wished t

11、o look behind them. This country was conquered bythose who moved forward-and so will space.William Bradford, speaking in 1630 of the founding of the Plymouth Bay Colony, said that allgreat and honorable actions are accompanied with great difficulties, and both must beenterprised and overcome with an

12、swerable courage.If this capsule history of our progress teaches us anything, it is that man, in his quest forknowledge and progress, is determined and cannot be deterred. The exploration of space willgo ahead, whether we join in it or not, and it is one of the great adventures of all time, and nona

13、tion which expects to be the leader of other nations can expect to stay behind in this race forspace.Those who came before us made certain that this country rode the first waves of the industrialrevolution, the first waves of modern invention, and the first wave of nuclear power, and thisgeneration

14、does not intend to founder in the backwash of the coming age of space. We mean tobe a part of it-we mean to lead it. For the eyes of the world now look into space, to the moonand to the planets beyond, and we have vowed that we shall not see it governed by a hostileflag of conquest, but by a banner

15、of freedom and peace. We have vowed that we shall not seespace filled with weapons of mass destruction, but with instruments of knowledge andunderstanding.Yet the vows of this Nation can only be fulfilled if we in this Nation are first, and, therefore, weintend to be first. In short, our leadership

16、in science and industry, our hopes for peace andsecurity, our obligations to ourselves as well as others, all require us to make this effort, tosolve these mysteries, to solve them for the good of all men, and to become the worldsleading space-faring nation.We set sail on this new sea because there

17、is new knowledge to be gained, and new rights to bewon, and they must be won and used for the progress of all people. For space science, likenuclear science and all technology, has no conscience of its own. Whether it will become aforce for good or ill depends on man, and only if the United States o

18、ccupies a position of pre-eminence can we help decide whether this new ocean will be a sea of peace or a new terrifyingtheater of war. I do not say that we should or will go unprotected against the hostile misuse ofspace any more than we go unprotected against the hostile use of land or sea, but I d

19、o saythat space can be explored and mastered without feeding the fires of war, without repeating themistakes 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 arehostile to us all. Its conquest

20、deserves the best of all mankind, and its opportunity forpeaceful cooperation many never come again. But why, some say, the moon? Why choosethis 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 choose to go to the moon

21、. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the otherthings, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve toorganize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one thatwe are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to post

22、pone, and one which we intend to win,and the others, too.It is for these reasons that I regard the decision last year to shift our efforts in space from lowto high gear as among the most important decisions that will be made during my incumbencyin the office of the Presidency.In the last 24 hours we

23、 have seen facilities now being created for the greatest and mostcomplex exploration in mans history. We have felt the ground shake and the air shatteredby the testing of a Saturn C-1 booster rocket, many times as powerful as the Atlas whichlaunched John Glenn, generating power equivalent to 10,000

24、automobiles with theiraccelerators on the floor. We have seen the site where five F-1 rocket engines, each one aspowerful as all eight engines of the Saturn combined, will be clustered together to make theadvanced Saturn missile, assembled in a new building to be built at Cape Canaveral as tall asa

25、48 story structure, as wide as a city block, and as long as two lengths of this field.Within these last 19 months at least 45 satellites have circled the earth. Some 40 of them weremade in the United States of America and they were far more sophisticated and supplied farmore knowledge to the people

26、of the world than those of the Soviet Union.The Mariner spacecraft now on its way to Venus is the most intricate instrument in thehistory of space science. The accuracy of that shot is comparable to firing a missile fromCape Canaveral and dropping it in this stadium between the 40-yard lines.Transit

27、 satellites are helping our ships at sea to steer a safer course. Tiros satellites have givenus unprecedented warnings of hurricanes and storms, and will do the same for forest fires andicebergs.We have had our failures, but so have others, even if they do not admit them. And they may beless public.

28、To be sure, we are behind, and will be behind for some time in manned flight. But we do notintend 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 universeand environment, by new techniques of learnin

29、g and mapping and observation, by new toolsand computers for industry, medicine, the home as well as the school. Technical institutions,such as Rice, will reap the harvest of these gains.And finally, the space effort itself, while still in its infancy, has already created a great numberof new compan

30、ies, and tens of thousands of new jobs. Space and related industries aregenerating new demands in investment and skilled personnel, and this city and this state, andthis region, will share greatly in this growth. What was once the furthest outpost on the oldfrontier of the West will be the furthest

31、outpost on the new frontier of science and space.Houston, your city of Houston, with its Manned Spacecraft Center, will become the heart of alarge scientific and engineering community. During the next 5 years the National Aeronauticsand Space Administration expects to double the number of scientists

32、 and engineers in this area,to increase its outlays for salaries and expenses to $60 million a year; to invest some $200million in plant and laboratory facilities; and to direct or contract for new space efforts over $1billion from this center in this city.To be sure, all this costs us all a good deal of money. This years space budget is three timeswhat it was in January 1961, and it is greater than the space budget of the previous eightyears combined. That budget now stands at $5,400 million a year-a staggering sum, thoughsomewhat less than we pay for cigarettes and ciga