[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 104 (Tuesday, July 22, 1997)]
[House]
[Pages H5495-H5496]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




       AMERICA'S SPACE PROGRAM: A SOURCE OF PRIDE AND INSPIRATION

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 21, 1997, the gentleman from Florida [Mr. Weldon] is recognized 
during morning hour debates for 5 minutes.
  Mr. WELDON of Florida. Madam Speaker, let me begin by saying that I 
would like to be a cosponsor of the legislation being submitted by the 
gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. McHale], and I very much endorse his 
very eloquent comments. I know Teddy Roosevelt has been an inspiration 
for me, not so much in my political career, but as well as a young man 
growing up and seeing how somebody like him could overcome adversity 
and take the risks that he did. So I congratulate the gentleman and the 
gentleman from California [Mr. Cunningham], on your endeavor, and I 
would like to support you in that.
  Madam Speaker, I rise this afternoon to talk about our Nation's space 
program. As all Americans know, our Nation's success in the arena of 
space has

[[Page H5496]]

been a source of great pride and inspiration for many Americans, 
particularly our Nation's youth. Of course, it all got started by the 
people who were willing to take risks.
  There is probably nobody who has taken more of a risk than John 
Kennedy when he made the commitment to go to the Moon, and he said we 
go to the Moon not because it is easy, but because it is hard. The way 
to the Moon was paved by those many men and women who worked on the 
programs Mercury and Gemini, and then ultimately the successful Apollo 
program.
  Of course, following that we had the tremendous success of our 
shuttle program. The shuttle has proven its durability and its 
tremendous versatility, a vehicle that can go up and come back, a 
vehicle that can go up, retrieve satellites, bring them back to Earth 
and then launch them again.
  Of course, we recently all across the world were spellbound by the 
tremendous success of the unmanned program to Mars, the Mars 
Pathfinder, and the rover Sojourner and how that fascinated not only 
all Americans, but particularly our Nation's youth.
  Now we are getting very close to the point where we will be launching 
and assembling our Nation's space station, a tremendous international 
cooperative event involving people not only here in the United States, 
but as well people in Europe and in Japan.
  I have with me on my left a diagram of what the orbiting space 
station would look like. In this particular diagram, you can see the 
shuttle in the background there docked to the space station, and it is 
delivering another element.
  This will be hopefully becoming a reality in the next 12 to 18 
months. We have some ongoing serious problems that we need to work 
through with the Russians and their failure to fund their components of 
the space station, but if we are really going to have an ongoing, 
growing space program, one of the things we need to overcome is the 
problem of the high cost of getting payloads into orbit.
  One of the ways we are hoping to do that is with this vehicle shown 
here in this poster, the X-33, the next reusable launch vehicle. This a 
vehicle that is being developed right now by Lockheed-Martin out in 
California, and this vehicle hopefully will dramatically reduce the 
cost of getting payloads into orbit.
  The goal or desire is to reduce the cost by a factor of 10, because 
that is one of the most expensive things about us going into space, is 
the actual cost of getting a pound from the surface up into orbit. This 
vehicle will be very similar to the shuttle, in that it will go up and 
come back and go up and come back, but will be using new modern 
technology that we all hope, all of us here in the House of 
Representatives, but as well all of those men and women that work in 
our space program at places like Kennedy Space Center and Johnson Space 
Center, at the Jet Propulsion Center in Pasadena, CA, we hope it will 
dramatically lower the cost so we can do more. What do we want to do? 
What are our hopes and dreams in terms of the future of going up into 
space, and what would we like to be able to accomplish?
  Well, this next poster I have here shows something that I think has 
some real potential. It shows men and women working on the surface of 
the moon and doing what? Well, one of the proposals that has been put 
forward is that we may be able to collect solar energy on the Moon and 
actually send it by microwave beams. The technology on this has all 
been worked out. It is not new technology. Send it to the Earth in a 
way that we could get electricity so we would not have to use nuclear 
powerplants and use fossil fuels. You are talking about a completely 
clean way to generate abundant forms of electrical power. If we can 
develop cheaper, more inexpensive ways to get payloads into orbit, it 
may be possible for us to reduce the cost of electricity to as little 
as 3 cents per kilowatt.
  Madam Speaker, I encourage all our colleagues to support the Nation's 
space program and the tremendous promise that it holds.

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