On September 12, 1962, President John F. Kennedy delivered a speech at Rice University Stadium in Houston, Texas, in which he appealed for support of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s program to land humans on the Moon. The following passage is an excerpt from Kennedy’s speech. Read the passage carefully. Compose a thesis statement you might use for an essay analyzing the rhetorical choices Kennedy makes to accomplish his purpose. Then select at least four pieces of evidence from the passage and explain how they support your thesis. In your response you should do the following: Respond to the prompt with a claim that establishes a line of reasoning. Select and use evidence to develop and support your line of reasoning. Explain the relationship between the evidence and your thesis. 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 10 years ago, under this standard, man emerged from his caves to construct other kinds of shelter. Only five years ago man learned to write and use a cart with wheels. Christianity began less than two years ago. The printing press came this year, and then less than two 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