First, I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving 20 | the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon 21 | and returning him safely to the earth. No single space project in 22 | this period will be more impressive to mankind, or more important 23 | for the long-range exploration of space; and none will be so 24 | difficult or expensive to accomplish.
25 |Dear Company,
130 |Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it 131 | everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, 132 | every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. 133 | The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident 134 | religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and 135 | forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of 136 | civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, 137 | every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, 138 | every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, 139 | every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and 140 | sinner in the history of our species lived there--on a mote 141 | of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
142 | 143 |First, I believe that this nation should commit itself to 144 | achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing 145 | a man on the moon and returning him safely to the earth. 146 | No single space project in this period will be more 147 | impressive to mankind, or more important for the long-range 148 | exploration of space; and none will be so difficult or 149 | expensive to accomplish.
150 | 151 |The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of 152 | the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so 153 | that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters 154 | of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by 155 | the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely 156 | distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent 157 | their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, 158 | how fervent their hatreds.
159 | 160 |We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this 161 | decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but 162 | because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and 163 | measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge 164 | is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to 165 | postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too.
166 | 167 |The surface is fine and powdery. I can kick it up loosely with my 168 | toe. It does adhere in fine layers, like powdered charcoal, to the 169 | sole and sides of my boots. I only go in a small fraction of an 170 | inch, maybe an eighth of an inch, but I can see the footprints of 171 | my boots and the treads in the fine, sandy particles. There seems 172 | to be no difficult in moving around, as we suspected.
173 | 174 |The view of the Earth from the Moon fascinated me-a small disk, 175 | 240,000 miles away. It was hard to think that that little thing 176 | held so many problems, so many frustrations. 177 | Raging nationalistic interests, famines, wars, 178 | pestilence don't show from that distance.
179 |Sincerely,
180 |First M. Last
181 |