A nation of explorers
I’d like you to ask your consideration to do something if you are so inclined. I’d like for you to watch a speech over the next couple of days that is famous for an electrifying declaration by President John F Kennedy. Consider watching it with a group of family and friends, and then sharing your reaction with a comment.
It is one of the deepest and most important speeches ever delivered by an American president. It touches on the momentum of human progress against the sweep of mankind’s recorded history, and ponders the infancy of our technological era.
The speech is a meditation about the necessity and morality of exploration that makes clear that discovery will bring new crises and challenges. It is also a speech that is steeped in humility, reminding us that, despite our achievements, what we have learned is like a thimble of water compared to the vast ocean of knowledge that remains unknown, unseen, unimagined, unexplored and undiscovered.
It is a speech that celebrates the scientist and explorer. It offers a vision for peace, knowledge and learning that can benefit the whole of humanity without conceding the necessity that mankind’s conquest of space be led under a “banner of freedom,” not a “flag of conquest.”
The United States is a nation of pioneers and risk takers who have long been at the forefront of human discovery. It is a fundamental aspect of the American character. Exploration is an elemental aspect of the human character because it summons all of the indomitable qualities of it in the pursuit of the undiscovered. There is no exploration without human grit, perseverance, determination, risk, courage and love. Without these virtues, a society chokes to death on the fumes of its decay and rot. We go as always because “ it is there,” and because it is, it must be challenged and conquered.
Watch this speech. It offers a reminder of how we find the gateway towards something better than what we have. It reminds us to look up and out. Let’s watch:
“Why does Rice play Texas? We choose to go to the moon and do these other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard.”
The Earth’s greatest living explorers are the four surviving Americans who have walked on the moon, and a 56-year-old retired US Navy Commander Victor Vescovo.
Soon, a new generation of NASA Artemis astronauts will surpass all achievements in the annals of human exploration as they return and establish the Gateway Space Station in lunar orbit, a permanent lunar base. They will ultimately land on Mars before returning safely to Earth. The scale of the ambitions are extraordinary, but they are not the only adventures worth chronicling or the only discoveries worth celebrating.
Commander Vescovo, a graduate of Stanford University, who holds a Masters degree in political science from MIT with a specialty in arms control, as well as a Harvard MBA, has summited the highest mountains on each continent. He has also dived to the deepest point of each of Earth’s five oceans. He has skied to both the North and South Pole. By doing all of this, he has achieved the Explorers Grand Slam. He has also flown into space aboard the New Shepard spacecraft, making him the only human being who has ever flown to space, and also been atop each continent’s highest mountain and at the bottom of every ocean.
He recently made two astounding discoveries and he is owed a great debt of gratitude by the United States of America for his team’s achievement. Commander Vescovo discovered two of the most storied warships in the history of the United States Navy. Both were sunk in ferocious combat against overwhelming odds.
He has found the final resting places of the USS Samuel B. Roberts (DE-413) and the Fletcher class destroyer USS Johnston (DD-557). Both ships were part of “Taffy 3,” the outnumbered US Naval Task Force that made a suicide charge against an overwhelmingly superior Japanese battle fleet, that included the largest battleship ever built, the Yamato. The battle was memorialized in “The Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors.” It is an outstanding book.
The Samuel B. Roberts was discovered in 22,621 feet of water, while the Johnston was discovered 21,181 feet deep. Eighty-nine officers and men went down with the Roberts, while 186 men, including Captain Ernest E. Evans from hardscrabble Pawnee, Oklahoma.
Commander Ernest Evans was 36 years old when he took command of the Johnston in 1943, and this is what he said: “This is going to be a fighting ship. I intend to go into harm’s way and anyone who doesn’t want to go along should get off right now.” The Annapolis graduate was three-quarters Native American and known as “Big Chief.” He is one of the most heroic warriors in American history.
When the Johnston and Samuel B. Roberts both charged the Japanese fleet, the Captain of the Roberts addressed his sailors. He told them that they were in a fight against overwhelming odds and survival couldn’t be expected. He said they would attempt to do “as much damage as possible.”
They did their duty and turned back the Japanese fleet, which was coming to attack the American landing beaches. The brave men of the USS Samuel B. Roberts and USS Johnston are missing in action no more. They are discovered and at rest.
The United States of America is blessed to be the home of humanity’s greatest explorers. Exploration in space, cyberspace and across the frontiers of medicine, energy, technology and artificial intelligence will write a future that is unimaginable — though in the broad sweep of time is just seconds away from the invention of electricity.
Seventy per cent of Earth is covered by her oceans, and it is an astounding fact that 25 per cent of the world’s sea floor is already mapped. It will be completely mapped by the time we reach the century’s midpoint. Yet, the age of discovery is just now beginning. That is why this is the greatest time to be alive in the history of human civilization. There has never been a moment where current ignorance of all things stands so ready to take a giant step forward — whether America’s ludicrous politicians are ready or not.
Everything in America isn’t broken. Men like Victor Vescovo and Ernest Evans have always proved that. Our Kevin McCarthys are our exceptions, not the rule.
The speech by JFK remains one of the greatest by a politician with both heart and vision. Even without the stirring
musical backing, it brings me to tears.
And the rhetorical device of condensing human history to a graspable scale allows us to get a real understanding of the inevitability of human progress and how the astonishing achievements of scientific and artistic advancement mix with human courage and selfless ambition , to keep alive the essential human need to learn. Kennedy’s speech is a necessary reminder of our nation and by extension all humanity, functioning at its best.
When we compare this to the sad spectacle of fear, racism, and unadulterated stupidity that already characterizes the McCarthy Congress, we understand quickly what the coming storm of selfishness , ignorance and indifference has in store for us all.
President Kennedy's speech is as relevant now as it was then, or perhaps even more so, given that we live in a time where science itself is under fire on a level not seen since the Scopes trial. Dr. Anthony Fauci, a man who has devoted his life to the science of saving lives, is pilloried and scorned, with calls to throw him in prison or worse. Vaccines - the single greatest public health triumph since the discovery of germ theory - are excoriated as poison or as a microchip delivery system.
I pray that the continued exploration of space, and of the wonders of our own planet such as the deepest trenches in the ocean, usher in a renaissance of scientific knowledge and a renewed reverence for our place in this unimaginably vast universe. May we be brave enough to continue onward, and wise enough to put our discoveries to their best use for the betterment of all humankind and the little blue ball orbiting the sun that we live on.