Neil deGrasse Tyson says America has lost its exploratory compass

Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson recalled President John F. Kennedy's famous "We will go to the moon" speech at Rice Stadium and discussed the drivers of exploration, but what he most wanted to talk about at Rice University's 100th commencement ceremony May 11 was Apollo 8.



"It was unheralded but it was the first mission to leave Earth and go somewhere else," Tyson said of the 1968 mission around the moon that prepared NASA -- and humanity -- to land on another world less than a year later.

Neil deGrasse Tyson says America has lost its exploratory compass at Rice's 100th commencement