“We Chose”: How Kennedy’s Moon Challenge Inspired Generations

When President John F. Kennedy challenged the United States in the 1960s to land men on the Moon and return them safely to Earth, the aim was to push the country to do what was hard — to achieve what many thought impossible.

The effect of that challenge, and of meeting it, ran deeper still. Generations of men and women around the world were inspired to commit their lives to exploration and to the pursuit of the next giant leap. That is the subject of We Chose: The Inspiration of Apollo, a short film produced by NASA’s Johnson Space Center for the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 landing.

Rice University

The film opens with Kennedy’s speech at Rice University. Space would be explored whether or not the United States took part, he argued, and it was one of the great adventures of all time; no nation that expected to lead others could stay behind. Why climb the highest mountain, he asked — why fly the Atlantic, why does Rice play Texas? And then the words that became the program’s motto: “**We choose to go to the Moon.**”

From Apollo to today

The film traces that challenge forward: from “one small step” on the Moon, through the long-duration expedition crews of later decades, to the breakthroughs in technology since Apollo 11 that let astronauts travel farther and more safely than ever — and to the next goal, of sending American astronauts, including the first woman, back to the Moon.

Sources

Based on "We Chose: The Inspiration of Apollo," NASA Johnson Space Center video and description, NASA Image and Video Library; a work of the United States government in the public domain.