OPINION: We choose to go to the Moon—and that choice still defines who we are

Maxime Marquette

2026-06-20 18:18:35

The Hidden Structure of a Rhetorical Masterpiece

It is a mistake to reduce the Rice University speech to a single quote. That day, Kennedy built a cathedral of arguments, stone by stone, with an architect’s precision and a preacher’s passion. He began by condensing 50,000 years of human history into a few stunning sentences—the invention of writing, the steam engine, penicillin—as if to whisper to his audience: Look where we’ve come from. Look at what we’re capable of. And now, look where we’re going.

Then he turned uncertainty into fuel. The unknown? It’s not a wall. It’s a door. Fear of failure? That’s not wisdom. It’s paralysis. Kennedy made boldness a patriotic duty, risk a national virtue, and the impossible a political agenda. No Western leader since has produced a case as brilliant, as relentless, or as viscerally inspiring.

Kennedy did not beg his people to be courageous. He held up a mirror to them and showed them what they had always been. Courage did not need to be invented—it needed to be awakened.

Fourteen words that encapsulate an entire civilization

“Not because they are easy, but because they are hard.” Fourteen words. The entire Western philosophy compressed into a single breath. We do not go around obstacles. We do not negotiate with difficulty. We embrace it. We seek it out. We devour it. And when the obstacle is so high it touches the sky, we build rockets to fly over it. Kennedy put it with surgical precision: it is the difficult that channels our energies, reveals our capabilities, and measures the true extent of our determination.

The Moon was not a destination. It was a test. The ultimate challenge capable of bringing together the absolute best of what America—and through it, the entire West—could produce. The best of its science. The best of its industry. The best of its courage. The best of that indescribable, incandescent quality that makes human beings willing to climb into a capsule perched atop three thousand metric tons of fuel and let themselves be propelled into the void.

1962–2026: The same rivalry, the same stars, the same sense of urgency

Two Eras, One Struggle

In 1962, the enemy was the Soviet Union. Gagarin had flown a year earlier. Sputnik had humiliated America. The Soviets dominated space and made no secret of it. America, its pride wounded, had made the most reckless gamble in its history: to aim for the Moon before the end of the decade, even though it had barely managed to put an astronaut into Earth orbit.

In 2026, the adversary is China. It has landed rovers on the far side of the Moon—where no one had ever been. It has brought back lunar samples with a precision that has sent a chill down the spines of Western observers. It is building its own space station in orbit. And it announces, with the terrifying calm of a power that never bluffs, that it will walk on the Moon before the end of this decade. The parallel with 1962 is not a figure of speech. It is a geopolitical assessment.

They say history doesn’t repeat itself. Really? Because right now, it’s pounding so hard on our door that we can hear the echo of Rice Stadium all the way to the control rooms at the Kennedy Space Center.

The cost of inaction is always higher than the cost of boldness

Kennedy had identified the true peril with blood-chilling clarity. The peril was not failing to reach the Moon. The peril was never setting out at all. Leaving the heavens to the adversary. Waking up one morning in a world where the stars speak a hostile language—yesterday Russian, today Mandarin. He had put it in strikingly grave terms: “Space can be explored and mastered without fanning the flames of war. But if the United States does not establish a position of preeminence, hostile space could become a theater of terror.” That statement was 63 years ahead of our present reality.

Choosing the Hard Path: The Genetic Code of the West

What the Moon Says About Us to the Rest of the World

Going to the Moon is not a whim. It is not a titanic exercise in vanity. It is not a blank check signed by out-of-touch dreamers. It is a declaration of existence. When the West chooses the Moon, it tells the world: we believe that science liberates. That knowledge elevates. That collective courage can accomplish what solitary caution will never dare. That freedom is not a weakness—it is a driving force.

Kennedy understood this to his very core. He knew that the Moon was a mirror. Not a distant, cold celestial body. A vast mirror, suspended in the sky, in which a civilization looks at itself and decides—truly decides—whether it is still capable of greatness. Whether it deserves the respect of its own children. Whether it has the right to stand tall and say: we are builders, explorers, pioneers, and we will not stop.

Every era builds its cathedrals. In the Middle Ages, they were made of stone and stained glass. In the 21st century, they are made of titanium and cryogenic fuel. But the drive is the same. Unchanging. Upright. Pointing toward the sky and saying “we can”—and then proving it.

Cozy comfort is the mortal enemy of ambition

There is a passage from Rice’s speech that is almost never quoted, yet today it strikes with the force of an uppercut. Kennedy compared the space race to climbing a mountain. Why climb? Not for the summit, really. For what the effort of climbing does to you. For the inner transformation. For the discipline forged through suffering. For the pride earned centimeter by centimeter.

We live in the most comfortable era in human history. Everything is accessible, instantaneous, delivered even before we desire it. And this comfort threatens to lull us to sleep. It threatens to make us forget that great civilizations never survive because of their wealth. They survive because of their hunger. Their hunger for discovery. Their hunger to surpass themselves. Their hunger for the impossible. The Moon is our antidote to sleep. Our cosmic alarm clock.

"Within This Decade": When Urgency Becomes the Most Powerful Fuel

A deadline that electrified an entire nation

“Before this decade is out.” Seven words that turned a dream into a plan. Kennedy didn’t say “someday, maybe.” He didn’t say “when the technology is ready.” He didn’t say “if Congress grants us the funding.” He said: before 1970. Period. Non-negotiable. And that date—that line in the cosmic sand—sparked an unprecedented human mobilization. 400,000 people worked on the Apollo program. Engineers, welders, seamstresses who sewed the spacesuits by hand, stitch by stitch, knowing that a single missed stitch could cost a human life.

That is exactly what Artemis needs in 2026. Not vague statements. Not flexible roadmaps that get pushed back every year. Dates. Commitments set in stone. Appointments with history that we show up for on time. China has dates: 2030 to walk on the Moon, 2035 for a permanent base. When your competitor moves forward with the relentless regularity of a metronome, you don’t have the luxury of being vague.

A dream without a date is wishful thinking. Wishful thinking without a timeline is resignation disguised as poetry. Kennedy understood that urgency is not the enemy of greatness—it is its lifeblood.

Every day of hesitation is a gift to Beijing

Every year of delay in Artemis is a year gained for the Chinese space program. Every postponement sends a devastating signal to the world: the West is hesitating. The West is doubting. The West may be weary. And every budgetary hesitation is a golden invitation to the enemies of freedom to fill the void we leave in the sky. Kennedy put it with almost prophetic insight: in the space race, there is no silver medal. There are those who are up there. And those who watch from below.

What the Moon Revealed to Us the First Time—and What It Has in Store for Us

Earthrise: The Photograph That Changed Humanity’s Perspective

December 24, 1968. Christmas Eve. Astronaut William Anders, aboard Apollo 8, turned his camera toward Earth and pressed the shutter button. Earthrise. The rising of the Earth. A ball of unbearably blue, veined with white, suspended in total darkness above the Moon’s gray, lifeless horizon. This photograph—a single image, captured in a fraction of a second—shook humanity to its core. It sparked the environmental movement. It inspired the creation of Earth Day. It showed seven billion human beings their cosmic fragility—and their beauty.

What will the Moon show us this time? What revelations lie dormant in the permanently shadowed craters of the lunar poles, where water ice has been waiting for billions of years? What discoveries will transform our understanding of the universe, of ourselves, and of our place in this vastness? We don’t know. And it is precisely this ignorance that must propel us forward. The greatest argument for going to the Moon is everything we don’t yet know.

The most important photograph ever taken by a human being was not taken on Earth. It was taken 380,000 kilometers from home, by a man floating in a capsule no bigger than a car. Imagine what the next generation of explorers will bring back.

Every dollar invested in the stars comes back multiplied on Earth

Skeptics always ask the same question, in the same reasonable tone, with the same serious expression: why spend billions on the Moon when there are so many problems right here on Earth? Kennedy had already shattered that objection before it was even voiced. The space program creates hundreds of thousands of jobs. It stimulates entire industries. It produces technologies that transform everyday life. The water filters you use, the miniaturized electronics in your phone, the insulation in your home, the navigation systems in your car—all of this comes from the Apollo program. Every dollar sent to the Moon has returned tenfold to Earth. That’s not poetry. It’s accounting.

Artemis: When the Heir Surpasses the Founder

This time, we’re not just visiting. We’re settling in.

The Artemis program is, at its very core, the fulfillment of Kennedy’s promise—pushed beyond what Kennedy himself had dared to imagine. Apollo visited the Moon. Artemis aims to inhabit it. To establish a permanent presence. To set up the Gateway orbital station as a home base. Extracting water from the lunar poles. Producing fuel on site. And preparing, from this forward base, for the next leap toward Mars. Kennedy wanted the Moon as a proof of concept. Artemis makes it the springboard to the entire solar system.

And what makes Artemis even more powerful than the original dream is that it doesn’t speak on behalf of a single nation. It speaks on behalf of a coalition. More than 40 nations that are signatories to the Artemis Accords. Europe, Japan, Canada, Australia, South Korea, Ukraine—yes, Ukraine, the country fighting for its freedom on the ground while reaching for the stars. Faced with this alliance, the Sino-Russian bloc moves forward alone, opaque, and closed off. Two visions of the sky. Two models of civilization. Two possible futures.

Kennedy spoke for a nation. Artemis speaks for an alliance of free nations—united not by coercion, but by choice. The coalition for an open sky against those who would turn it into a closed domain. The choice is blindingly clear.

The SLS: When the Earth Itself Trembles with Impatience

The SLS rocket generates 39.1 meganewtons of thrust at liftoff. It stands 98 meters tall—taller than a 30-story building. It is the most powerful launch vehicle ever built by human hands. When its engines ignite and it tears away from Launch Pad 39B, the ground vibrates for kilometers around, the air tears apart, and the horizon turns white. Kennedy would have trembled with joy at the sight of it. He would have recognized in this titan of metal and fire the exact embodiment of what he had promised at Rice Stadium: the organized energy of an entire civilization, concentrated in a single point, propelled toward infinity.

The Verdict from Space: Autocrats Don't Last

Putin, Xi, Khamenei: Three Regimes Confronted by the Naked Truth of Physics

Putin’s Russia is bombing residential buildings in Ukraine and children’s hospitals in Kyiv, yet it can no longer send a single cosmonaut beyond low Earth orbit. Its Luna-25 lunar program crashed spectacularly in 2023. The mullahs’ Iran funds militias from Tehran to Beirut, but has absolutely no lunar capabilities. North Korea fires ballistic missiles that end up at the bottom of the Sea of Japan. Only China poses a serious competitor—and even it lags behind the U.S. schedule.

Space is the ultimate lie detector of geopolitics. It demands open science, transparent cooperation, free innovation, and reliable institutions. All of which authoritarian regimes are structurally incapable of producing over the long term. Kennedy understood this before anyone else: the race to the Moon was not just an engineering challenge. It was a test of the political system. And in 1969, democracy set foot on the Sea of Tranquility. Not dictatorship.

Sending a human being to the Moon requires one thing that money cannot buy: truth. The truth of calculations, the truth of materials, the ruthless truth of the laws of physics. Regimes built on lies cannot withstand the vacuum of space. Gravity negotiates with no one.

When Artemis III sets foot on the Moon, it will be a living manifesto

When Artemis III lands the first woman and the first astronaut of color on the lunar surface, it won’t be just a PR stunt. It will be the most spectacular demonstration the world has ever seen: the West is sending its best—period. Regardless of gender. Regardless of background. Regardless of skin color. Merit. Talent. Competence. Nothing else. Try to find a comparable message coming from Beijing or Moscow. You’ll be searching for a long time.

The Sacred Duty: Honoring the Dead by Carrying On Their Dreams

Kennedy never saw the Moon. And that is why we must go back there.

Kennedy was assassinated on November 22, 1963. Eighteen months after Rice’s speech. Six years before Armstrong climbed down the ladder of the Eagle lunar module and left his boot print in the dust of the Sea of Tranquility. He launched humanity’s greatest adventure. He never saw it come to fruition. But his words—his six immortal words—have survived everything. Bullets. Grief. Decades. The oblivion that devours everything else.

“We choose to go to the Moon.” We choose. This verb is an act. It is performative. It creates the reality it names. Not “we hope.” Not “we are considering.” Not “we are launching a feasibility study.” We choose. And in 2026, that verb must be spoken once more, with the same passion, the same conviction, the same sacred urgency that made Kennedy’s voice tremble under the Texas sun.

Great men die. Their words, however, refuse to die. And the words Kennedy spoke at Rice University are more alive, more fiery, more necessary today than nearly all the speeches delivered yesterday by our current leaders.

Every child who looks up at Artemis is an heir

Every ten-year-old girl who watches an Artemis rocket launch on her screen and feels her heart burst in her chest is an heir to Kennedy. Every teenage girl who scribbles equations in her notebook while dreaming of a spacesuit carries on Rice’s promise. Every engineer working on the SLS, on Orion, on SpaceX’s Starship, on the Gateway station, is fulfilling—step by step, bolt by bolt, line of code by line of code—the wish of a man who passed away more than sixty years ago—and whose voice still carries farther than any rocket.

The verb “to choose”—the most powerful verb in the human language

We choose. Again. Always. Stronger.

We choose the Moon. We choose Mars. We choose Jupiter’s icy moons and Saturn’s rings and deep space with its unfathomable mysteries. We choose all of this not because it’s profitable—but because it’s necessary. Necessary for our security. Necessary for our prosperity. Necessary for that fragile, precious, irreplaceable thing we call our identity as a civilization.

Kennedy had saved his most powerful argument for last. He had said that this generation refused to “drift in an ocean of despair.” That it wanted to be on the right side of history. On the side of those who dare. Of those who build. Of those who look up at the night sky not with the fear of a slave—but with the insatiable appetite of an explorer.

The opposite of courage is not cowardice. It is indifference. And in the face of the Moon, in the face of Mars, in the face of the vast infinity that beckons us—indifference is the only truly unforgivable choice.

Conclusion: The sky belongs only to those who dare to look up

Final Words—and the First Step Toward Tomorrow

Sixty-three years ago, a young man, suffering from a back condition, racked with pain but burning with conviction, stood up under a blazing sun and spoke six words that changed the course of humanity. Seven years later, two men walked on the Moon. Not because it was easy. Because it was hard. Because the hard path is the only one that leads to greatness.

Today, the rocket stands on the launch pad. The crew is training. A coalition of more than forty nations is in place. The technology surpasses anything Apollo could have dreamed of. The $93 billion has been invested. The countdown has begun. Only one thing is missing—the same thing that was needed in 1962, the same thing that will always be needed.

The will.

The will to choose. The will to take risks. The will to stand up, point to that pale disk in the night sky, and say—with a voice that does not tremble, with Kennedy’s voice, with the voice of our entire civilization:

“We choose to go to the Moon.”

We do, too.

Again.

Always.

And may the heavens watch us come.

The Moon holds no memory of those who dreamed of it from their couches. It knows only the names of those who set foot on it. It’s time to add new names to that list—and never, ever close it again.

Signed, Maxime Marquette