[pf] The 'blip' that is our current world, in JFK's 'space' speech.

[contains: (compressing 50,000 years into 50 years)
  "Only last week did we develop penicillin and television and nuclear
power, …
   This is a breathtaking pace, and such a pace cannot help but create new
ills as it dispels old, new ignorance, new problems, new dangers."  ]

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http://www.ruf.rice.edu/~instresr/ricefacts/history.html  has:
1962    Rice University donates land for NASA's Johnson Space Center.
Speaking in Rice Stadium, President John F. Kennedy announces that the
United States intends "to become the world's leading space-faring nation":

http://riceinfo.rice.edu/Fondren/Woodson/speech.html  starts:

John F. Kennedy
               Address at Rice University in the Space Effort
                                September 12, 1962

President Pitzer, Mr. Vice President, Governor, Congressman Thomas, Senator
Wiley, and Congressman Miller, Mr. Webb. Mr. Bell, scientists,
distinguished guests, and ladies and gentlemen:

I appreciate your president having made me an honorary visiting professor,
and I will assure you that my first lecture will be very brief. I am
delighted to be here and I'm particularly delighted to be here on this
occasion.

We meet at a college noted for knowledge, in a city noted for progress, in
a State noted for strength, and we stand in need of all three, for we meet
in an hour of change and challenge, in a decade of hope and fear, in an age
of both knowledge and ignorance. The greater our knowledge increases, the
greater our ignorance unfolds.

Despite the striking fact that most of the scientists that the world has
ever known are alive and working today, despite the fact that this Nation's
own scientific manpower is doubling every 12 years in a rate of growth more
than three times that of our population as a whole, despite that, the vast
stretches of the unknown and the unanswered and the unfinished still far
out-strip our collective comprehension.

No man can fully grasp how far and how fast we have come, but condense, if
you will, the 50,000 years of man's recorded history in a time span of but
a half century. Stated in these terms, we know very little about the first
40 years, except at the end of them advanced man had learned to use the
skins of animals to cover them. Then about ten years ago, under this
standard, man emerged from his caves to construct other kinds of shelter.
Only 5 years ago man learned to write and use a cart with wheels.
Christianity began less than 2 years ago. The printing press came this
year, and then less than 2 months ago, during this whole 50-year span of
human history, the steam engine provided a new source of power.

Newton explored the meaning of gravity. Last month electric lights and
telephones and automobiles and airplanes became available. Only last week
did we develop penicillin and television and nuclear power, and now if
America's new spacecraft succeeds in reaching Venus, we will have literally
reached the stars before midnight tonight.

This is a breathtaking pace, and such a pace cannot help but create new
ills as it dispels old, new ignorance, new problems, new dangers. Surely
the opening vistas of space promise high costs and hardships, as well as
high reward.

So it is not surprising that some would have us stay where we are a little
longer to rest, to wait. But this city of Houston, this State of Texas,
this country of the United States was not built by those who waited and
rested and wished to look behind them. This country was conquered by those
who moved forward-and so will space.

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 this
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.

Yet the vows of this Nation can only be fulfilled if we in this Nation are
first, and, therefore, we intend to be first. In short, our leadership in
science and in industry, our hopes for peace and security, our obligations
to ourselves as well as others, all require us to make this effort, to
solve these mysteries, to solve them for the good of all men …

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sent on by David.
(David MacClement) d1v9d @ bigfoot.com (remove spaces)
http://www.emucities.com.au/member/davd/index.html#top
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