[Congressional Record Volume 155, Number 80 (Monday, June 1, 2009)]
[Senate]
[Page S5899]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                             NASA NOMINEES

  Mr. NELSON of Florida. Madam President, later on this week, I will 
talk about the plans we have in the Space and Science Subcommittee of 
the Senate Commerce Committee to do the hearings on the President's 
nominee for the NASA Administrator and Deputy Administrator, and I will 
announce that timetable later, after conferring with Senator 
Rockefeller, the chairman of the Commerce Committee.
  I have a lot to say about the President's nominee, who I think is 
going to be one of the outstanding Administrators of NASA.
  GEN Charlie Bolden will take over at a critical time in NASA's 
history because NASA is in drift. It is right at the ending of the life 
of the space shuttle as we finish the next eight missions to further 
complete the construction of the space station and equip it to be the 
national laboratory it is designed to be and then to ramp up in the 
development and testing of the new rocket, a program called 
Constellation, the rocket Aries, the capsule, hearkening back to some 
of the similar designs of the old capsule in the Apollo days, this one 
being called Orion, carrying a crew of up to seven, or should I say a 
crew of six. All that is now under review by a specially appointed 
Presidential commission, headed by a very esteemed aerospace expert, 
former Lockheed Martin CEO, now retired, Norm Augustine.
  I will have more to say about this later, but let me congratulate 
President Obama on such an exceptional appointment. It is needed 
because our space program is certainly a part of the American 
character. GEN Charlie Bolden is the right person at the right time to 
lead this little agency out of the wilderness to the promised land, and 
that promised land is a robust space program, both human and unmanned, 
as we explore. That is what we are, we are explorers by nature.

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