[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 102 (Thursday, July 17, 1997)]
[House]
[Pages H5449-H5450]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                       SUPPORT THE SPACE PROGRAM

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Rogan). Under a previous order of the 
House, the gentleman from Florida [Mr. Weldon] is recognized for 5 
minutes.
  Mr. WELDON of Florida. Mr. Speaker, I rise this afternoon to speak 
about our space program and the recent successes that it has had. They 
really, truly have been spectacular. They have drawn the attention of 
the whole world. As all of us know, there are some risks associated 
with going up into space. It is not a business for those who are risk 
averse but the payoffs are tremendous and we have seen that with all 
the tremendous breakthroughs in science and technology that came from 
our Apollo program and Mercury and Gemini programs. Those were really 
the pioneers, those were the men and women who first got involved, led 
the race to the Moon and we learned a great deal, a tremendous amount.
  Then we were able to follow on from all that with the current 
reusable launch vehicle that we have, the space shuttle program, a 
program that has shown and demonstrated its tremendous durability and 
its tremendous versatility with the ability to go up into space and 
retrieve satellites and fix those satellites and then redeploy them 
back out into space.
  Of course, right now we are currently involved with the shuttle-Mir 
program. We all know there are some serious concerns about the Mir and 
its ability to survive, but we have learned a great deal from men in 
space, from the cooperative effort there.
  But really what I did want to talk quite a bit about and acknowledge 
the tremendous work of NASA and particularly the people at JPL and 
everybody that was involved in this program, the tremendous success of 
the Mars Pathfinder program. Indeed, I think it has captured the 
imagination of men and women, young and old all around the globe. I 
just wanted to share with my colleagues today some of these tremendous 
photographs that have been made available to me by NASA officials.
  This is a photograph taken by the rover after it went off the ramp 
there. You can see here these tracks in the Martian soil. You can look 
back and see the Pathfinder vehicle right there on the surface of Mars 
where it landed. Then this is a shot taken by the Pathfinder of the 
Sojourner vehicle. It is really a tremendous photograph, tremendous 
detail. You can see the tremendous detail in the soil and in the rocks.
  There is our little rover, Sojourner. An amazing vehicle. It survived 
very nicely the landing on Mars and it has been roving around using 
solar power. These are the solar panels on the top of the Sojourner and 
it collects solar energy and it is able to travel around on the surface 
of Mars, analyzing rocks. It is really going to provide our scientists 
a tremendous amount of information about Mars, Mars history, and it is 
already revealing that Mars may have at one time had a climate much 
more similar to Earth's than what it is right now.
  I would also like to share, Mr. Speaker, with my colleagues here an 
artist's rendering of our international space station, something that 
we definitely need to get up in space soon to replace the Mir with all 
its associated problems. But this is going to be a great, tremendous 
opportunity for people from Europe and Japan, and hopefully if the 
Russians can get it together, they will be able to stay involved in it, 
and where people from all over the world will be working together doing 
tremendous scientific research.
  Where do we go from there is the question. We all want to see the 
space station up there and flying in space, but what is next? We need 
to go on from there. We do not want to just stop at that point. Here I 
have for you some artist's renderings of some very exciting concepts. 
This would be for a lunar base and the possibility of having something 
like this in the future truly does exist. For example, one of the 
potential uses of going back to the Moon is to actually collect solar 
energy on the surface of the Moon and beam it, using microwaves, to the 
Earth. This would be an inexhaustible source of solar energy that could 
be used well into the future. It would eliminate fossil fuel usages and 
nuclear power

[[Page H5450]]

plants. Definitely a cheap and inexhaustible source of energy.

  But this is really what I wanted to spend a little bit of time 
talking about today, and, that is, maybe someday the possibility of 
going on to Mars with a manned mission. There are people within NASA as 
well as within the American space society talking about ideas of how we 
could someday send men and women to Mars. This shows a Mars base and a 
return vehicle there as well as a little greenhouse. This is what it 
could someday be. I encourage all my colleagues to support NASA and 
support our space efforts.

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