“….we choose to go to the moon. 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. . ”
— president john f. kennedy, speech at rice university, september 12, 1962

the main purpose of this speech was to win public support for

a. establishing a missile defense system on the moon

b. cooperating with communist countries in exploring space

c. surpassing the soviet union in the space race

d. controlling the spread of nuclear weapons