“Giant Leaps” Speech for President Mitch Daniels

Background

The following speech is written for Purdue University President Mitch Daniels to introduce Beth Moses as the featured speaker in an upcoming program as part of the university’s ongoing Presidential Lecture Series. The event will take place on November 6th, 2023, in Fowler Hall on the university’s West Lafayette campus. The intended audience for this lecture is Purdue faculty, alumni, and students, as well as the general public of Lafayette who choose to attend. The purpose of this speech will not just be to introduce the guest lecturer and provide a brief biography for her, but also to contextualize why her inclusion in the lecture series is significant for the Purdue community at this point in time.

The Speech: “Giant Leaps”

Greetings everyone and thanks for joining us this evening. I’m Mitch Daniels, President of Purdue University, as you might have guessed from the title of this lecture series, and it is my distinct pleasure tonight to introduce our guest speaker, Beth Moses. Before I hand over the mic, though, I want to take a moment to acknowledge some of the giant leaps that have brought Beth, myself, and many of you in attendance, here tonight. When I first started this Presidential Lecture Series in 2014, I imagined it would be an opportunity to expose our students and other members of the Purdue community to some of the brightest minds of our day. To showcase what can be accomplished when you really work hard at something, and hopefully, to inspire those of you in attendance to strive for the level of excellence for which our university is known. To shoot for the stars, as it were.

Speaking of stars, Purdue’s track record of excellence can’t be summed up by any better metric than through the accomplishments of our alumni. We are lucky to have an incredible network of innovators who have made giant leaps in many fields, from engineering to business to agriculture and beyond. Think of Neal Armstrong himself, whose one small step onto the surface of the moon still echoes through history as one of the greatest leaps mankind has ever taken. Well, he was a boilermaker too. As were twenty-six others who have made the giant leap into space, including names you might recognize, like Gus Grissom, Gene Cernan, and Janice Voss. I have long admired that ethos Tom Wolfe summed up when he wrote about the early days of the American space program. In order to become an astronaut, one had to have the so-called “right stuff.” That special blend of superior skill, rugged determination, peerless courage, and strength of character.

It is an honor to have Beth here tonight, given her many ties to this legacy I can point to. For example, Beth spent the first two decades of her career working at NASA, where she helped the International Space Station go from drawing board to orbit. In 2013, she made a giant leap to the private sector, to work for Virgin Galactic. A few years ago, she earned the distinction of becoming the first woman to fly to space on a commercial vehicle, and has made two more spaceflights since then. But aside from these remarkable achievements, the reason why we can tell Beth truly has “the right stuff’ is that she has one of the greatest distinctions, I feel, that anyone working today can have, and that is that she is a Purdue alum.

Beth joins us tonight at a pivotal juncture in time. The revolution of commercial spaceflight is just beginning, but the possibilities it will enable are beyond comprehension. What was once achievable only by global superpowers is steadily becoming accessible to more people than ever before. Private sector competition in the space industry will drive innovation, not just in space tourism, but in technologies like Starlink that will have profound effects for those of us whose feet remain planted here on earth. It’s worth mentioning that Beth’s current job title at Virgin Galactic is Chief Astronaut Instructor, and it will be her duty to help teach the next generation of commercial astronauts, some of whom might be with us here tonight. So in the honor of giant leaps, please join me in giving a giant welcome to Beth Moses.