{"id":9721,"date":"2025-08-30T05:37:00","date_gmt":"2025-08-30T04:37:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/familjen.larsen.vc\/?p=9721"},"modified":"2025-09-22T16:52:08","modified_gmt":"2025-09-22T15:52:08","slug":"forsta-vykortet-i-to-the-moon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/familjen.larsen.vc\/?p=9721","title":{"rendered":"F\u00f6rsta vykortet i To the Moon"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Redan efter f\u00f6rsta dagens steg, fick vi v\u00e5rt f\u00f6rsta vykort.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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JFK\u2019s speech is greeted with great acclaim in the press. It is an inspiring and hopeful message that expresses all the best intentions and goals of space exploration. It\u2019s worth reproducing some of it in full, as it speaks for itself:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI do say that space can be explored and mastered without feeding the fires of war, 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 may never come again. But why, some say, the Moon? Why choose this 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. 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 easy, but because they are hard; 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 we intend to win, and the others, too\u201d.
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Exploration for exploration\u2019s sake, scientific advancement not in the pursuit of power or dominance, but to discover and explore the universe. It is a speech that recognises that unique and noble impulse of humans – to leave comforts, prejudices and preconceptions behind and, in the name of curiosity, explore the unknown. Kennedy, in even stronger terms than Eisenhower in his 1958 speech, establishes a vision for a Space Race that moves further from its military origins.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


Of course, not everyone is energised by this rousing paean to science and progress. The American political right dismisses the idea out of hand. Former President Dwight Eisenhower, worried as usual about the nation\u2019s purse strings, calls the idea of spending all these tax dollars on going to the Moon \u2018nuts\u2019, and Senator Barry Goldwater, Kennedy\u2019s Republican rival, criticises the prioritisation of a civilian space programme, claiming it would leave the US vulnerable to the still-mounting Soviet military advances.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


Yet Kennedy\u2019s speech comes in a time of national (and for the President, likely personal) self-doubt. The Soviets seem to be miles ahead in space-faring technology, having beaten the Americans in almost every endeavour, from satellites to Lunar exploration to space flight. Worse, a year prior, the Bay of Pigs fiasco, when the Soviet-aligned revolutionary government in Cuba repelled a secret US-backed invasion, caused a grave national humiliation. The US at the time needed a reason to believe in itself. Kennedy does this by appealing to the best of American self-conceptions, the nation’s idea of itself as a pioneering people, as innovators and dreamers, boundary-pushers and trailblazers. Americans, as freedom lovers, are not compelled to go to space by a totalitarian government, nor are they forced into the endeavour by the need to compete with a powerful rival – no, they choose to go to the Moon for the sake of their own curiosity, their own humanity.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Redan efter f\u00f6rsta dagens steg, fick vi v\u00e5rt f\u00f6rsta vykort. JFK\u2019s speech is greeted with great acclaim in the press. It is an inspiring and hopeful message that expresses all the best intentions and goals of space exploration. It\u2019s worth reproducing some of it in full, as it speaks for itself: \u201cI do say that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9717,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[363,67],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9721","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-02-to-the-moon","category-gabriel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/familjen.larsen.vc\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9721","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/familjen.larsen.vc\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/familjen.larsen.vc\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/familjen.larsen.vc\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/familjen.larsen.vc\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9721"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/familjen.larsen.vc\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9721\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9723,"href":"https:\/\/familjen.larsen.vc\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9721\/revisions\/9723"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/familjen.larsen.vc\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/9717"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/familjen.larsen.vc\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9721"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/familjen.larsen.vc\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9721"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/familjen.larsen.vc\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9721"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}