[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 107 (Friday, July 25, 1997)]
[House]
[Pages H5821-H5824]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                           THE SPACE PROGRAM

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Pease). Under the Speaker's announced 
policy of January 7, 1997, the gentleman from Florida [Mr. Weldon] is 
recognized for 60 minutes.
  Mr. WELDON of Florida. Mr. Speaker, I rise again to talk about our 
Nation's space program. I rose earlier in a special order with the 
gentleman from Minnesota [Mr. Gutknecht] to talk about our Republican 
tax package and how it was going to help working families, and I talked 
at great length about a particular working family in my congressional 
district that was going to be helped tremendously by our tax package.
  It was going to help them in many, many different ways. The $500 per 
child tax credit was going to help them, because they had three kids, 
and it was going to give them an extra $1,500 a year. But probably 
also, more importantly, the education tax credits were going to help 
them to be better able to send their kids to college.
  This is the Auger family I was talking about, and they had one young 
man 15 years old, their oldest son, college material, and they were 
looking at some very, very serious financial strain. They had a family 
income of about a little less than $40,000 a year, but trying to raise 
three kids and send them to college was a real strain.
  I was pleased to get up and to be able to talk about them, but I did 
want to talk a little more about our Nation's space program. I 
represent an area of our country that most people have heard a great 
deal about. We call it in the Space Coast of Florida. It is where Cape 
Canaveral and Kennedy Space Center is located.
  We have a lot of men and women in our community that work in our 
Nation's space program, and I wanted to rise today and salute them and 
talk about the role that they have played in really forming a whole 
part of our American fabric.
  We are a great Nation, extending from the bustling cities of our 
Northeast to the beautiful beaches of Southern California, from the 
beautiful northern Pacific coast to our sunny beaches in Florida.
  There is a lot that goes into making up America and what makes this 
Nation the great Nation that it is, and a big part of it, in our modern 
era, is our Nation's space program, and it is something that all 
Americans, I believe, are very proud of.
  What we have today was really built on a lot of the hard work of the 
people that began the program, the early pioneers, so to speak, in our 
Nation's space program. One important point I want to make is these 
people were risk-takers. We all know some of the hardships and, indeed, 
that actually people have lost their lives in our Nation's space 
program. So going up in space and exploring space has its risks. But I 
believe it is well worth the price.
  I think there is something that beats in the hearts of every human 
being, not just Americans but all people all over the world, but 
particularly Americans, because we are a nation of pioneers. We all, 
except for our native Americans, we were all raised with the knowledge 
that our parents came to this country. They were either brought as 
slaves or their ancestors came from Europe or from Asia.
  We are a nation of pioneers, people who ventured out into the 
unknown, and that desire that beats in the hearts of all people, and 
particularly all Americans, I think, is encapsulated in our space 
program and what our space program is.
  We have had tremendous successes. Of course, we began with the 
Mercury program and the early astronauts, one of whom is a Senator in 
the other body to this day, and then it continued with the Gemini 
program, and, of course, on to the Apollo program, something that all 
schoolchildren today learn about, how the United States took part in 
the great space race with the Russians and we were able to succeed and 
win and get to the moon first.
  But now we are in a new era, a new era of space exploration, and I 
wanted to talk a little about that. I have some really wonderful 
photographs I wanted to show. This, of course, is a photo of our space 
shuttle, the current reusable launch vehicle that we use to bring men 
and women up into space.
  It has been a tremendously successful program. For those who have 
never seen one take off, I would highly encourage all Americans to try 
to get down there to the Kennedy Space Center area for a launch. You 
cannot get any closer than 3 miles, but even at 3 miles away, when this 
thing takes off, your shirt actually shakes from the power of the thing 
taking off.
  It is 11 million pounds of thrust putting this thing into orbit, and 
what is amazing about it, it is the only reusable launch vehicle. It 
comes back, lands on a runway, and then can be reconfigured and 
restacked and cycled again, and they go up and they come back. What is 
truly amazing about this program is not only the amazing technology of 
the program, but that this is actually 25-year-old technology.
  What I think is very, very exciting is a program that we are working 
on today in NASA, which is the new reusable launch vehicle. And I 
wanted to take a little time to talk about this program, because it is 
really in its infancy, but this artist's rendering of what it will look 
like, I think, encapsulates it very nicely.
  This shows the new replacements for the shuttle that we are currently 
doing the early design work and engineering on, and it shows, obviously 
somewhere over our desert West, maybe California or Arizona, 
hypothetically coming in for a landing. Because it would take off going 
straight up, the vehicle would then land on a runway like our current 
shuttle does.
  The important thing about this is that the whole idea with the new 
reusable launch vehicle to replace the space shuttle is to reduce the 
costs of putting payloads into orbit. Even though the shuttle program 
is a tremendous success, it is still costly to go up into space. It 
actually comes down to about, I believe it is $10,000 a pound for each 
pound that we put up into orbit. That is a considerable cost.

  So our idea here in the Congress and the Senate, and the President 
supports

[[Page H5822]]

this program, is to come up with new technologies and new designs for a 
new vehicle to replace our Nation's space shuttle that, hopefully, we 
can deploy sometime in the next decade and, most importantly, that it 
would reduce the cost of getting payloads into orbit by a factor of 
ten, reducing the costs from $10,000 per pound down to $1,000 per 
pound.
  This could create a tremendous revolution in space travel. It would 
allow us to put satellites in orbit more cheaply. It would also allow 
us to put men and women in orbit at a lower cost.
  I want to talk a little about that, because we have another very 
exciting program that is well ahead of this program. This program will 
be on line, hopefully, sometime later in the next decade. We have a 
program called the international space station that I wanted to talk 
about and share with those listening.
  This is an artist's rendering of the future international space 
station. This is a tremendously exciting program. Most people are aware 
of the Russian space station that is up there right now, it is called 
the Mir. It has been up there for many years. There have been recently 
some serious problems with the Mir, and it is probably ready for 
retirement now, but it most certainly will be ready for retirement 
soon.
  What we have in the international space station is an effort to have 
our international partners, the Europeans, the Japanese, the Canadians, 
and as well the Russians, come together and form a consortium to truly 
build a true international space station that would have people from 
different countries participating in.
  This program is so exciting for so many reasons, and I wanted to talk 
about that a little bit. One of the biggest reasons, I think, why it is 
so exciting is the tremendous amount of research that will be possible 
on the space station.
  I am a physician. Prior to being elected to the Congress, I practiced 
medicine, and I was able to see on a daily basis the spin-off benefits 
of our space program in terms of helping people on earth. I took care 
of a lot of heart patients, people with cardiac conditions, for 
example, and the technologies that we use in things like pacemakers, in 
imaging technologies, like used in the cardiac catheterization lab, as 
well as imaging technologies like MRI scanning and CAT scanning, these 
are all spin-off benefits of our space program.
  There have been a tremendous number of other spin-off benefits, such 
as breakthroughs in material science. What is very, very exciting for 
me as a physician about the kinds of research that can be done on the 
space station is the tremendous breakthroughs that are a potential to 
be made in the area of pharmaceuticals.
  Because so many of the new drugs that they want to design and 
develop, there are problems with trying to work with them in the 
gravitational environment here on earth. But because of the 
weightlessness of the space station, they will be able to do tremendous 
amounts of additional research in this area, particularly in the area 
of crystal growth and understanding molecular structures better. So 
this has the potential of tremendous benefits for people all over the 
world.
  This shows the space station orbiting, and it is going to be orbiting 
at about 200 miles above the surface of the Earth. And I believe it is 
showing the space station orbiting over Greenland, I believe is what 
that is supposed to be.
  We can see those solar panels here. They will be generating the 
electricity to run the environmental systems that provide oxygen and 
clean the carbon dioxide out of the system, but as well provide the 
lighting and the cooling and the heating systems. But additionally, 
these solar panels will generate the electricity for the labs that will 
actually do the scientific research.

                              {time}  1600

  You can see here, this module right here shows the European research 
area, and this module over here shows the Japanese research area. You 
cannot really see it very well, but the U.S. module is back in here 
where the U.S. scientists will be doing their research.
  As somebody who has followed the shuttle program very closely and the 
tremendous amounts of scientific research that have come out of the 
shuttle programs, what amazes me is the amount of breakthroughs they 
have made in science and our understanding of technology. But the 
shuttle was only up there for 2 weeks. But in this program, the 
astronauts doing the research will be able to be up there for months 
and months at a time.
  Indeed, this is projected to be orbiting above the Earth for more 
than a decade, a decade and a half, possibly longer. So this is one of 
the ways we are heading in our space program, a cooperative effort. 
There are some problems that lie ahead with the space station program. 
In particular, I want to talk a little bit about the Russians.
  One of the critical partners in the program are the Russians. And 
they have not been paying for their components that go into the Space 
Station. I have been asking the administration, particularly the Vice 
President, to do their best to try to work with the Russians. I went 
over to Russia in February of this year to meet with the Russians and 
talk with them about the importance of them having the financial 
resources to continue to invest to make sure that our space station 
program is a success.
  But to just get back to the next replacement to the space shuttle, 
the reusable launch vehicle, or RLV, as it is shown, or X-33 shown in 
this picture, someday the shuttle program will be phased out in the 
future and, hopefully, this will be replacing the shuttle and, 
importantly, will be dramatically reducing the cost of getting payloads 
into orbit. And that will have a tremendous number of additional spin-
off benefits. I want to talk a little bit about that.
  Why do we want to reduce the cost of getting payloads into orbit? 
Well, there are a lot of reasons. One of them is to be able to better 
service the space station. But there are a lot of new, exciting 
technologies that are coming forward that could have tremendous 
benefits for people on Earth, and one of them is in the area of power 
generation. And I wanted to just talk a little bit about that.
  We all know we are very, very dependent in our modern society on 
electricity. Electricity is critical for not only our lighting and 
heating and running air conditioning systems, but, as well, it is 
critical for industry. Every business runs on electricity. We all know 
that there are basically three sources of electricity. Hydroelectric 
power, of course, is a clean and non-polluting way to get electricity. 
But we rely predominantly on power generation from burning fossil fuels 
and from nuclear power.
  There are two major concerns that are involved with both of those 
power sources. One of them is greenhouse gases and burning fossil fuels 
and burning oil and burning coal, it puts a lot of carbon dioxide into 
the atmosphere. And the potential long-term consequences of that are of 
concern to everybody, the impact on the environment, the possibility 
that it could cause temperatures on Earth to rise slowly over time 
exists.
  And then, of course, with nuclear power, there is the concern about 
what do we do with the spent nuclear fuel. After the fuel has burned 
and generated electricity in the nuclear power plant, what do you do 
with that nuclear waste? Nobody wants it in their backyard. Well, there 
is another solution available and that, of course, is solar power. But 
solar power has had its problems. One of the problems with it is just 
weather. If we put solar panels on our roof, we can generate a lot of 
electricity, but not on cloudy days.
  Another problem area is we cannot generate electricity at night with 
solar power. Well, it turns out that the technology is available to us 
today to put solar collectors up in space and to generate electric 
power up there and to transmit that electric power to Earth, using 
microwaves, and then collecting those microwaves on the surface of the 
Earth using a special type of antenna called a rectifying antenna, or 
rectenna, and then converting it back to electricity.
  One of the first concerns everybody is worried about when they hear 
about this is, are not those microwaves going to be dangerous? Well, it 
actually turns out they will have only 25 percent of the energy of 
sunlight. So actually a

[[Page H5823]]

bird could fly right through the microwave beams and it would have 
absolutely no effect on them. So they are very environmentally 
friendly.
  It turns out that one of the problems with putting solar collectors 
in orbit is gradually over time they will tend to descend down into the 
atmosphere, so you have to keep reboosting them. But an efficient way 
to do it would be to actually put the solar collectors on the Moon.
  In this photo that I show here, it shows people, men and women, 
working on the Moon, possibly in some kind of a base that would be 
doing something like collecting solar power. And there are scientists 
in this country today who believe that not only is the technology here 
and available now but that if we are willing to make the investment, 
that we could actually produce electricity for less money than what it 
costs. Indeed, some argue that it could be as cheaply as 3 cents a 
kilowatt.
  This is why we need to develop a replacement for the shuttle that 
reduces the cost of getting payloads into orbit, and this is why we 
need to learn by working in space and our space station about what are 
the problems associated with long-term exposure in space and what is it 
like to have to be able to construct something large like that in 
space; because the technology and the science will help us to possibly 
be able to move on to something like this, actually generating power in 
space and the potential benefits that this could have for all of 
mankind to be able to produce more cheaply not only for the United 
States but possibly for all people all over the world and produce it 
without any pollution.
  But there is another aspect to space exploration that I want to talk 
about, and it is not just the practical side. I have spent a lot of 
time this afternoon talking about the practical applications of space 
exploration, the practical benefits of going up in terms of 
breakthroughs in medical science and engineering and our understanding 
of technology. But there is just more to it than that. There is a 
desire, and I talked about this earlier in my comments, there is a 
desire that is burning in the heart of all people to explore and find 
out new things, to go places where you have never been before.
  I want to talk a little bit about the possibility of going to Mars. 
We have heard a lot recently about Mars in the news, the Mars 
Pathfinder mission and the tremendous success that was and how 
important that was for a better understanding of Mars. We have learned 
a great deal, for example, that Mars indeed may have once had an 
atmosphere much more like Earth's and that there may have been abundant 
amounts of water. And one of the big questions, of course, has life 
evolved on Mars in some form, some microscopic form? Some day we may be 
able to go to Mars.

  I wanted to show one more diagram. This artist's rendering shows what 
it would be like to possibly send a man to the Moon. And this involves 
using new technologies that are being researched right now at NASA. 
This would be a habitation module. This right here would possibly be a 
module where you would actually grow possibly plants in a controlled 
atmosphere; because the atmosphere out here is mostly carbon dioxide 
but you could create an environment inside a plastic shell like this 
where you would put oxygen and you would possibly be able to grow 
plants to be able to feed the men and women that would be working in 
this environment. And this, of course, shows what would be their return 
vehicle. Is this practical? Can we do it?
  Well, there are some people who argue that it would be just too 
expensive. There are some people who have argued that a trip to Mars 
could cost as much as $500 billion and, therefore, it is just too 
prohibitively expensive.
  Well, recent research has shown that it may be possible to do it for 
substantially less, possibly as little as one-tenth that cost. And this 
is why it is so important, I believe, for the cooperative effort like 
we are seeing with the international space station. If our 
international partners can come together and people like the Europeans, 
the Japanese, the United States, the Russians, work together 
successfully on the space station program, it may indeed be possible 
then afterwards for us to come together as a people from all over the 
world and cooperatively fund something like this so that we could be 
able to send a manned expedition to Mars.
  We just do not know what we will find out, what we will discover. The 
Mars Pathfinder sent an unmanned rover vehicle to Mars, and we are 
discovering a lot from that. But imagine the tremendous amount of 
discoveries that we could make if we were able to send men and women to 
Mars driving around in a vehicle like that, people who could actually 
get out and look at the rocks and dig for things and try to discover. 
We have no idea what science and technology breakthroughs could come 
from this and what we could learn as a people by exploring Mars and 
sending men and women to Mars.
  I do not believe that is where it will end. I believe Mars may just 
be one more step. We went to the Moon. Some day we may go on to Mars. 
Some day we may go beyond our own solar system. We may be able to find 
other planets that potentially could be colonized by men and women.
  And it all began back in the 1960's. It began with a challenge, a 
challenge made really by an American President, John F. Kennedy. And I 
wanted to just dwell on something that he said that I think is very 
important. He said that we go to the Moon not because it is easy, but 
because it is hard. He accepted the challenge and knew it was going to 
be difficult, but he also knew that if we applied ourselves and God's 
will was with us and good fortune, that we would be able to succeed. 
But he knew that there were going to be risks.

                              {time}  1615

  Mr. Speaker, today we are at that same kind of a threshold. We are on 
the verge of getting our international space station up and running. We 
are on the verge of a newer, less expensive, more efficient replacement 
vehicle for the shuttle. There is the possibility of returning to the 
Moon, of going on to Mars. But yet there are always people in this body 
rising up and saying, ``No, no, no, we shouldn't do it, we should spend 
money elsewhere on something else.'' There were people back then during 
the Jefferson administration who were saying the same exact thing: 
``Let's not do it.''
  I want to talk about one other aspect of that book that I found 
fascinating. Not only were there Congressmen who did not want to fund 
the program, that did not think we should be going forth into the 
unknown, but the program ran over budget. When it ran over budget, 
there were those who were harshly critical of the Lewis and Clark 
expedition. Such is the case today. Every time any one of these space 
programs run even this much over budget, there are people who come 
forward and say, ``No, no, no, we need to end the program, it's not 
worth the cost, we need to turn back from the future.'' That is really 
what this is about, the future. It is about our kids.
  I talked earlier this afternoon about an amazing thing that teachers 
tell me in my congressional district, that when they want to motivate 
children to learn science and math, the thing that motivates them the 
most is to talk about our space program and to talk about how knowledge 
of science and math can be applied in the space program. It opens their 
eyes and it motivates them to get involved and be educated more in 
those areas. Those are crucial areas. Not every one of those kids who 
gets motivated is going to end up working in the space program, but we 
all know that many of them will be working in areas where science, 
engineering, math, and technology are critical for the United States to 
be able to continue to maintain and be the world's leader. I believe it 
is critical for us to continue to try to make these investments in the 
future. That is what it is really about when we talk about space and 
exploring space. It is about our kids, it is about the future.
  Are we going to turn our backs on the future? Are we going to turn 
our back on exploration? The history books are filled with the stories 
of nations and peoples who turned their backs on the future, who 
stopped exploring and stopped looking into the unknown. Those nations 
no longer continue to thrive and grow. I do not believe that will ever 
happen to the United States. I believe there will always be a majority 
in this body that will continue to support our space program and 
supporting the future. That is to so great

[[Page H5824]]

a degree what our space program is about, looking on ahead into the 
future, taking the risks and willing to look on into the unknown.

                          ____________________