​Per Owlstra ad Astra: Why Rice Should Choose Space

In a remote corner of Fondren stands a podium marked with the Seal of the President of the United States. From it, on Sept. 12, 1962, John F. Kennedy delivered his famous “Moon Shot Speech” to an audience of 40,000 at Rice Stadium: “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.” Seven years later, the Apollo 11 mission landed on the lunar surface. Yet, as far as most Rice students are concerned, that lonely podium and the few dusty mementos displayed alongside it are all that remain to signify our university’s great role in humanity’s celestial quest.