Extra Credit Part 1

Extra Credit – Part 1 Read the article below, and then write an essay (At least 4 paragraphs) that explains the pros and cons of returning to the moon and beyond. Be sure to site examples/evidence from the article to support your statements. I also expect you to include your own thoughts on the issue. If more research is necessary to reinforce any specific points of view from the article, I expect you should/can do that as well.

Forty two years ago, two Americans touched down on the moon and walked upon its surface. Now, NASA’s trying to do it again with Constellation, an ambitious project to return humans to the moon by 2020. But if NASA could do it in the eight years between President John F. Kennedy’s 1961 speech that led to the historic first lunar landing of Apollo 11 on July 20, 1969, some wonder why it is so difficult to go back. By 2020, 16 years will have passed since NASA launched its new moon-bound vision in 2004. For one thing, the goal this time around is significantly expanded from last time. "This is much more than flags and footsteps," said John Olson, director of NASA's Exploration Systems Mission Directorate Integration Office. "We're going for a sustained human presence in space." Rather than visit the moon for hours or days at most, Constellation astronauts will embark on missions that could last months. They will need new tools and technologies for living on the moon, and must construct semi-permanent habitats on the lunar surface. Besides the challenge of designing these systems, NASA must build a spaceship than can transport all the extra supplies. Rocket science NASA's current rockets and space shuttles aren’t capable of surpassing low-Earth orbit to reach the moon with the amount of gear required for a manned expedition. "The amount of rocket energy it takes to accelerate those kinds of payloads away from Earth doesn’t exist anymore," said Jeff Hanley, NASA's Constellation program manager. "It exited in the Apollo era with the Saturn V. Since that time this nation has retired that capability." NASA is developing new rockets, called Ares I and Ares V, for the return trip to the moon. These will be larger and taller than their Apollo-era Saturn counterparts, and will be able to carry significantly more weight. The Constellation plan calls for these new rockets to surpass the Saturn vehicles in capability, but to do it on a budget. "We want to do it cheaper, and we want to do it safer," Hanley told SPACE.com. "That's a pretty tough prescription for NASA to meet." And on top of those challenges, Constellation plans to go farther than the moon: The lunar voyages will be a staging ground to prepare humans to journey to Mars. "The complexity of leaving Earth's orbit, we understand that," said Frank Peri, director of NASA's Exploration Technology Development Program at Langley Research Center in Virginia. "But getting back to the moon is not trivial, staying on the moon is not trivial, and going on to Mars is even beyond that." Fiscal challenges While engineering a return trip to the moon won't be easy, some experts say the biggest hurdle for Constellation is money. NASA is spending $35 billion to build Orion and the Ares I. "The technologies that we need to do the job are largely in hand," Hanley said. "In terms of the challenge, it's really a fiscal challenge - the amount of money that the nation can afford to spend." During the Apollo years NASA's budget was almost five percent of the federal budget. Now, it's less than one percent. "We understand the technologies that will be necessary, but it's going to take an investment to do that," said Roger Launius, space history curator at the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum. "That's the rub." During the 1960s, many Americans felt the expense of Apollo was justified because of its importance to national security during the cold war. Today, some people question whether human space exploration is as valuable. "There are not compelling publicly-held reasons for doing this," Launius said. "Without a rationale that everybody understands and can buy into, it’s a very hard sell to get the resources to do it." NASA maintains there are a host of good reasons for going back to the moon. In addition to the lunar science that can be learned, and the thrill of human exploration, many of the new technologies could have applications on the ground. For example, advances in high-efficiency batteries, energy storage systems, and closed loop environmental control and life support could benefit people back on Earth, Olson said. "Despite the fiscal challenges and the tough times that we currently are experiencing, we need to go do this because of the economic benefits, because of the positive impact on people in our society," Olson said. "It truly is a worthy goal."

Extra Credit – Part 2 Address at Rice University on the Nation's Space Effort

When John F. Kennedy became president in January 1961, Americans had the perception that the United States was losing the "space race" with the Soviets. President Kennedy understood the need and had the vision of not only matching the Soviets, but surpassing them. On May 25, 1961, he stood before Congress and proclaimed that “this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before the decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the earth.” On September 12, 1962, President Kennedy delivered a speech describing his goals for the nation’s space effort before a crowd of 35,000 people in the football stadium at Rice University in Houston, Texas Go to the following website and listen to JFK’s famous speech. As you listen to the speech follow along and fill in the missing text. http://www.jfklibrary.org/Asset-Viewer/MkATdOcdU06X5uNHbmqm1Q.aspx President Pitzer, Mr. Vice President, Governor, Congressman Thomas, Senator Wiley, and Congressman Miller, Mr. Webb, Mr. Bell, scientists, distinguished guests, and ladies and gentlemen:

I appreciate your president having made me an honorary visiting professor, and I will assure you that my first lecture will be very brief. I am delighted to be here and I'm 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 for strength, and we stand in need of all three, for we meet in an hour of change and challenge, in a decade of hope and fear, in an age of both knowledge and ignorance. The greater our knowledge increases, the greater our ignorance unfolds.

Despite the striking fact that most of the ______that the world has ever known are alive and working today, despite the fact that this Nation¹s own scientific manpower is doubling every 12 years in a rate of growth more than three times that of our population as a whole, despite that, the vast stretches of the unknown and the unanswered and the unfinished still far outstrip our collective comprehension.

No man can fully grasp ______we have come, but condense, if you will, the 50,000 years of man¹s recorded history in a time span of but a half a century. Stated in these terms, we know very little about the first 40 years, except at the end of them advanced man had learned to use the skins of animals to cover them. Then about 10 years ago, under this standard, man emerged from his caves to construct other kinds of shelter. Only five years ago man 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 months ago, during this whole 50-year span of human history, the steam engine provided a new source of power.

Newton explored the meaning of gravity. Last month electric lights and telephones and automobiles and airplanes became available. Only last week did we develop penicillin and television and nuclear power, and now if America¹s new spacecraft succeeds in reaching Venus, we will have literally 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, ______. Surely the opening vistas of space promise high costs 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 by those who waited and rested and wished to look behind them. This country was conquered ______-- and so will space.

William Bradford, speaking in 1630 of the founding of the Plymouth Bay Colony, said that all great and honorable actions are accompanied with great difficulties, and both must be enterprised and overcome with answerable courage.

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, ______, 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.

Those who came before us made certain that this country rode the first waves of the industrial revolutions, the first waves of modern invention, and the first wave of nuclear power, and this generation does not intend to founder in the backwash of the coming age of space. We mean to be a part of it--we mean to lead it. For the eyes of the world now look into space, to the moon and to the planets beyond, and we have vowed that we shall not see it governed by a ______flag of conquest, but by a banner of ______and ______. We have vowed that we shall not see space filled with weapons of mass destruction, but with instruments of ______and understanding. Yet the vows of this Nation can only be fulfilled if we in this Nation are first, and, therefore, we intend to be first. In short, our leadership in science and in industry, our hopes for peace and security, our obligations to ourselves as well as others, all require us to make this effort, to solve these mysteries, to solve them for the good of all men, and to become the world's leading space-faring nation.

We set sail on this new sea because there is new knowledge to be gained, and new rights to be won, and they must be won and used for the progress of all people. For space science, like nuclear science and all technology, has no conscience of its own. Whether it will become a force for good or ill depends on man, and only if the United States occupies a position of pre-eminence can we help decide whether this new ocean will be a sea of peace or a new terrifying theater of war. I do not say the we should or will go unprotected against the hostile misuse of space any more than we go unprotected against the hostile use of land or sea, but I do say that space can be explored and mastered without feeding the ______, without repeating the mistakes 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 are hostile to us all. Its conquest deserves the best of all mankind, and its opportunity for peaceful cooperation many never come again. But why, some say, the moon? Why choose this as our goal? And they may well ask why ______? Why, 35 years ago, fly the Atlantic? Why does Rice play Texas?

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 ______, but because they are ______, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, 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 low to high gear as among the most important decisions that will be made during my incumbency in the office of the Presidency.

In the last 24 hours we have seen facilities now being created for the greatest and most complex exploration in man's history. We have felt the ground______and the air ______by the testing of a Saturn C-1 booster rocket, many times as powerful as the Atlas which launched John Glenn, generating power equivalent to 10,000 automobiles with their accelerators on the floor. We have seen the site where five F-1 rocket engines, each one as powerful as all eight engines of the Saturn combined, will be clustered together to make the advanced Saturn missile, assembled in a new building to be built at Cape Canaveral as tall as a 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 ______satellites have circled the earth. Some 40 of them were "made in the United States of America" and they were far more sophisticated and supplied far more knowledge to the people of the world than those of the Soviet Union.

The Mariner spacecraft now on its way to Venus is the most intricate instrument in the history of space science. The accuracy of that shot is comparable to firing a missile from Cape Canaveral and dropping it in this______between the 40-yard lines.

Transit satellites are helping our ships at sea to steer a safer course. Tiros satellites have given us unprecedented warnings of hurricanes and storms, and will do the same for forest fires and icebergs.

We have had our ______, but so have others, even if they do not admit them. And they may be less public.

To be sure, we are behind, and will be behind for some time in manned flight. But we do not intend 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 universe and environment, by new techniques of learning and mapping and observation, by new tools and 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 number of new companies, and tens of thousands of new ______. Space and related industries are generating new demands in investment and skilled personnel, and this city and this State, and this region, will share greatly in this growth. What was once the furthest outpost on the old frontier of the West will be the furthest outpost on the new frontier of science and space. Houston, your City of Houston, with its Manned Spacecraft Center, will become the heart of a large scientific and engineering community. During the next ______years the National Aeronautics and Space Administration expects to double the number of scientists and engineers in this area, to increase its outlays for salaries and expenses to $60 million a year; to invest some $200 million in plant and laboratory facilities; and to direct or contract for new space efforts over $1 billion from this Center in this City.

To be sure, all this costs us all a good deal of money. This year¹s space budget is ______times what it was in January 1961, and it is greater than the space budget of the previous eight years combined. That budget now stands at $5,400 million a year--a staggering sum, though somewhat less than we pay for cigarettes and cigars every year. Space expenditures will soon rise some more, from 40 cents per person per week to more than 50 cents a week for every man, woman and child in the United Stated, for 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. But if I were to say, my fellow citizens, that we shall send to the moon, ______miles away from the control station in ______, a giant rocket more than 300 feet tall, the length of this football field, made of new metal alloys, some of which have not yet been invented, capable of standing heat and stresses several times more than have ever been experienced, fitted together with a precision better than the______watch, carrying all the equipment needed for propulsion, guidance, control, communications, food and survival, on an untried mission, to an unknown celestial body, and then return it safely to earth, re-entering the atmosphere at speeds of over 25,000 miles per hour, causing heat about half that of the temperature of the sun--almost as hot as it is here today--and do all this, and do it right, and do it first before this decade is out--then we must be ______.

I'm the one who is doing all the work, so we just want you to stay cool for a minute. [laughter]

However, I think we're going to do it, and I think that we must pay what needs to be paid. I don't think we ought to waste any money, but I think we ought to do the job. And this will be done in the decade of the sixties. It may be done while some of you are still here at school at this college and university. It will be done during the term of office of some of the people who sit here on this platform. But it will be done. And it will be done before the end of this decade.

I am delighted that this university is playing a part in putting a man on the moon as part of a great national effort of the United States of America.

Many years ago the great British explorer George Mallory, who was to die on ______, was asked why did he want to climb it. He said, "Because ______."

Well, space is there, and we're going to climb it, and the moon and the planets are there, and new hopes for knowledge and peace are there. And, therefore, as we set sail we ask God's blessing on the most hazardous and dangerous and greatest adventure on which man has ever embarked. Thank you.

In JFK’s speech, he was trying to convince the American public that it was necessary to participate in the space race against Russia. He was very careful in using words/phrases that would inspire the American people and at the same time let them know about the dangers of Russia, if they were to win. Go back into the written part of the speech and find examples that accomplished those two missions.

Words/phrases of encouragement to promote pride in our country: * * * * *

Words/phrases to scare and make Americans aware of the possible dangers that await: * * * * *