Rice Stadium and Presidential visit to Houston. Footage of crowds arriving at Rice University's Rice Stadium during the visit to Houston, Texas, USA, by US President John F. Kennedy on 12 September 1962. While in Houston, he made a famous speech at Rice Stadium ('We choose to go to the Moon'). This speech was delivered to a crowd of 40, 000 people and was widely reported worldwide. The speech followed on from a famous pledge he had made in 1961 that the USA would achieve a Moon landing before the end of the decade. Kennedy's tour of Houston was part of an inspection of the resulting massive expansion of NASA and the Apollo moon programme.