On May 25, 1961, John F. Kennedy went before Congress and proposed that “this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth.” At the time, Alan Shepard had just spent 15 minutes in space -- less, really, as his entire flight lasted 15 minutes -- and Yuri Gagarin had spent 90 minutes doing one orbit of the earth.
The challenge of landing on the moon seems rather simple now in what Winston Churchill would call the light of after time, but in 1961 it was monumental. So many things had to be tested and accomplished before such a challenge could be reached. NASA would need to put men into space for much longer than 90 minutes -- up to 14 days, in fact; that would have to be followed by extra-vehicular activity (EVA), or spacewalking, and then orbital rendezvous and the docking of two spacecraft.
To land on the moon, a lot had to be accomplished by a manned spaceflight program that had become known as the "led-footed Mercury" as it struggled to overcome the early challenges of sending men into space. Shepard was followed in July 1961 by Gus Grissom, with another 15 minute suborbital lob. Troubles with the Atlas rocket delayed America's first earth orbit mission until February 1962.
Meanwhile, the best method for sending men to the moon was still being argued. Direct Assent called for a single rocket with the power to launch a single vehicle to land on the moon tail first and then launch from the moon for the trip home. Because of the enormous weight involved, Earth Orbit Rendezvous proposed using multiple rockets to lift the various required pieces of a moon lander to be assembled as they circled the earth. This still required a large moon lander with sufficient storage space to sustain the astronauts and power to lift it all from the moon's surface.
A third option called Lunar Orbit Rendezvous was initially rejected as being too risky, but the appeal of the idea eventually won out. The stumbling block of the other two concepts was the weight of the landing vehicle and the power required to get it off the moon and on its way back to earth.
Rendezvousing in lunar orbit presented an elegant solution, which was to shed no longer needed weight on the way to the moon and on the way home. Rocket stages needed to get the lunar vehicle into space, with a command module, could be shed once the vehicles were in earth orbit. The stage needed to send the vehicles out of earth orbit and toward the moon could then be shed once they were on the way. Best of all, the lunar vehicle itself could be shed when it was time to go home; one half would be left on the moon, and the other half in lunar orbit. Additional weight could be saved because the lunar module would not have to re-enter the earth's atmosphere.
All of that, however, still lay ahead. In September 1962, after John Glenn had completed 3 orbits of the earth, Kennedy spoke at Rice University:
"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, whether we join in it or not, 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 hostile flag of conquest, but by a banner of freedom and peace. We have vowed that we shall not see space filled with weapons of mass destruction, but with instruments of knowledge and understanding.
"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 that 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 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 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. . . ."
Here is a video with highlights of the speech, set to music from the HBO miniseries From the Earth to the Moon:
I don't know about you, but that fires me up.
Our individual challenges might not be as monumental as landing men on the moon. Some may appear to be insignificant, but others may be a matter of life and death. However a particular challenge might appear, we may still find it daunting; going on an LDS mission, going to college, starting a new job, running a marathon, etc. Whatever the challenge we can make the choice to carry on, not because it is easy, but because it is hard, because it is a challenge that we are willing to accept and one that we are not willing to postpone.
As William Clayton wrote in 1846:
Why should we mourn or think our lot is hard?
'Tis not so; all is right.
Why should we think to earn a great reward
If we now shun the fight?
Gird up your loins; fresh courage take.
Our God will never us forsake;
And soon we'll have this tale to tell --
All is well! All is well!
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