[Congressional Record Volume 154, Number 157 (Monday, September 29, 2008)]
[Senate]
[Pages S10058-S10059]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



  (At the request of Mr. Reid the following statement was ordered to be 
printed in the Record.

                                  NASA

 Mr. NELSON of Florida. Madam President, we have just passed 
the NASA reauthorization bill. It is noteworthy that next week, October 
1, the 50th anniversary of the start of the National Aeronautics and 
Space Administration, and if my colleagues will recall, that was 1958. 
My colleagues may remember what was happening. The Soviet Union had 
surprised us by putting into orbit the first satellite, Sputnik and 
America, in midst of the cold war among two superpowers, was absolutely 
shocked that we were behind in our technology; that we could not be 
premier. Then, lo and behold, 3 years later, they shocked us again by 
putting the first human in orbit, Yuri Gagarin, for one orbit when, in 
fact, we only had a rocket, the Redstone, that could get a human into 
suborbit. Then we put Alan Shepard and subsequently Gus Grissom in 
suborbit, and then, in the meantime, the Soviet Union put Titov into 
several orbits. Of course, the eyes of the world then focused in on 
Cape Canaveral, when a young marine, one of the original seven American 
astronauts, named John Glenn, climbed into that capsule knowing that 
the Atlas rocket had a 20-percent chance of failure. He rode it into 
the heavens for only three orbits. There was an indication on the 
instrument panel that his heat shield was loose, and as he started the 
deorbit burn, John Glenn knew that if that was an accurate reading, on 
reentry into the Earth's fiery atmosphere, heating up in excess of 
3,000 degrees Fahrenheit, he would burn up. It is that memorable time 
when we heard his last words before he went into the blackout period on 
radio transmissions: John Glenn humming ``The Battle Hymn of the 
Republic.'' It is hard to tell that story without getting a lump in my 
throat.
  Of course, what then happened, months before we flew John Glenn, we 
had a young President who said: We are going to the Moon and back 
within 9 years. This Nation came together. It focused the political 
will, it provided the resources, and it did what people did not think 
could be done.
  A generation of young people so inspired by this Nation's space 
program started pouring into the universities, into math and science 
and technology and engineering. That generation that was educated in 
high technology has been the generation that has led us to be the 
leader in a global marketplace by producing the technology, the 
innovations, the intellectual capital that has allowed us to continue 
to be that leader.
  So it is with that background that this Senator, who has the 
privilege of chairing the Space and Science Subcommittee within the 
Commerce Committee, wants to say: Happy birthday, NASA. We are sending 
to the House of

[[Page S10059]]

Representatives tonight this NASA reauthorization bill, which will give 
the flexibility to the next President, and his designee as the next 
leader of NASA, the flexibility in a very troubled program that has not 
had the resources to do all the things that are demanded of it to try 
to continue to keep America preeminent in space; also to continue to 
have access to our own International Space Station that we built and 
paid for; and then to chart out a course for the future exploration of 
the heavens that will keep us fulfilling our destiny of our character 
as an American people, which is that by nature we are explorers and 
adventurers.
  We never want to give that up. If we ever do, we will be a second-
rate nation. But we would not because we have always had a frontier, a 
new frontier. In the development of this country, it used to be 
westward. Now it i upward and it is inward and that is the frontier we 
want to continue to explore.
  So happy birthday, NASA. It is my hope that we will have the House of 
Representatives take this up on their suspension calendar tomorrow.
  I wish to give great credit to the staff who are in the room for the 
majority and the minority. They all have worked at enormous overload--
Chan Lieu and Jeff Bingham. Jeff, despite the fact of having suffered a 
heart attack earlier this year, and we didn't even let him out of his 
recuperative bed but that I was on the phone with him getting him to 
start corralling all these other Senators and House Members so we could 
get a consensus, so we could come together in an agreement.
  The result tonight is the fact that this has been cleared in a 100-
Member Senate, when Senators are on edge and they are always looking 
for something to object to, and there is no objection here, as ruled by 
the Presiding Officer.
  My congratulations to all the people, to the staff of the Commerce 
Committee, and to the staff of the Science and Technology Committee in 
the House of Representatives, chaired by Congressman Bart Gordon of 
Tennessee. I am very grateful for everybody coming together and making 
this happen.
  I want to say a special thanks to all of the Senate staff who worked 
so hard on the NASA authorization bill. Not just Chan Lieu and Jeff 
Bingham, but also Ann Zulkosky and Beth Bacon on the Commerce 
Committee, as well as Art Maples, my Congressional Fellow. We also had 
tremendous support from our legislative council, Lloyd Ator and John 
Baggley. Thank you all for your hard work and dedication.

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