President John F. Kennedy’s first announcement of the intention to land a man on the Moon by the end of the decade was made in a speech to Congress in May of 1961. But, he delivered the proclamation most people will remember to a large crowd at Rice University on Sept. 12, 1962, when he passionately laid out the "why" behind this ambitious goal.
"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 which we intend to win, and the others, too."
President Kennedy made that proclamation during a period of intense competition in space exploration between the United States and the Soviet Union. The so-called "Space Race" was deeply embedded in the broader context of the Cold War, where both nations wanted to demonstrate their technological superiority and ideological dominance.
The Apollo 11 lunar module, nicknamed "Eagle," landed on the Moon on July 20, 1969. Our guest today was part of the team that got it there.
Ed Grace was a Principal Engineer at the MIT Instrumentation/Draper Laboratory. They designed the inertial navigation system and computer software used to control the Apollo command and lunar modules. Ed was in a backup mission control room when the Eagle landed.
These days Mr. Grace gives talks about that time and those missions, as well as all sorts of other space-related topics. He recently to give talks for the FGCU Provost’s Seminar Series and the Naples Discussion Group titled “The Future of Space Exploration” so we brought him by the studio to reflect on the past, and look to the future.
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