[Congressional Record Volume 157, Number 96 (Thursday, June 30, 2011)]
[Senate]
[Pages S4264-S4265]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                       Thanking Senator Hutchison

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Florida.

[[Page S4265]]

  Mr. NELSON of Florida. Mr. President, while the Senator from Texas is 
still on the floor, I just want to say how, personally, this Senator is 
going to miss her after the calendar year 2012, since she is retiring 
from the Senate. I say that with the utmost respect and affection for 
the Senator from Texas because what a great partner she has been in 
setting policy for this Nation's space program.
  Had it not been for the Senator from Texas, we would not have that 
policy etched into law in the NASA bill that we passed last year and 
which now is the skeletal structure that we hang all the appropriations 
on going forward, giving a clear path, a clear direction, a clear 
roadmap for our Nation's space program. So I just wanted to thank the 
Senator from Texas in front of the Senate.
  Mrs. HUTCHISON. Mr. President, I appreciate so much the words of the 
Senator from Florida because, of course, he is not mentioning the great 
leadership he has portrayed.
  He is today the only Member of the Senate who has actually gone into 
space as an astronaut, and his love for and zeal for our space 
exploration is unsurpassed, and I appreciated working with him.
  It was our joint bill that passed last year that assures a way 
forward for NASA; that assures that there will be manned space 
exploration; that we will use the space station, in which we have 
invested hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars, for not only health 
benefits for our country but also learning about dark energy. The dark 
energy and antimatter research that is being done right now, I 
witnessed myself last week when I visited the NASA facility at the 
Johnson Space Center in Houston, TX. We are now getting information on 
the cosmic rays that are coming into the spectrometer that has just 
been put on the space station by CDR Mark Kelly and his crew during the 
most recent shuttle mission, and we are going to possibly learn the 
genesis of the universe by this facility that was put aboard the space 
station and the research that is going to be done on dark matter and 
what happens when it meets matter. It is really exciting, and I believe 
that the way forward that Senator Nelson and I have put NASA on, I 
believe, is going to assure that we have private sector involvement; 
that there will eventually be a transition to the private sector, but 
in an orderly way so that we don't lose the expertise in which we have 
invested so much.
  I hope later, before I leave, we will get a chance to talk about 
that. I am looking forward to going to the last launch of the space 
shuttle that America will put up. The systems that we have had will end 
after this last space launch that will happen in early July, and then 
we will be in the process of building the new vehicle which we have put 
in place in the law to begin to shorten the gap between the time that 
we can put Americans in space with our own vehicle. We are going to try 
to make that a shorter timeframe by the law that we passed.
  So, Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Florida and look forward 
to having more opportunities to talk about the importance of space 
exploration and America's preeminence in that field.
  I yield the floor.
  Mr. NELSON of Florida. Mr. President, I want to thank the Senator 
again. We stood shoulder to shoulder and we were able to get these two 
additional flights, which the Senator from Texas just chronicled, that 
no sooner had Mark Kelly and his crew put the alpha magnetic 
spectrometer up on the space station that it started collecting these 
cosmic rays.
  These are subatomic particles that are flying around in space that we 
try to duplicate down here on Earth by smacking atoms together in 
accelerators to understand subatomic particles, and we have them out 
there being collected right now on the space station in the AMS. It was 
on the station one day after they put it there. It is collecting this. 
It is going to help us learn all the way back to the origin of the 
universe.
  Mrs. HUTCHISON. If the Senator would yield.
  Mr. NELSON of Florida. Of course.
  Mrs. HUTCHISON. When I was there last week, Dr. Samuel Ting, who is 
the Nobel laureate from MIT who built the spectrometer and talked about 
and convinced us of the importance of putting it on the space station, 
he was there with Mark Kelly and myself, and he said they had 1 billion 
hits now of those cosmic rays and he was on a cloud, literally, about 
what they are learning already. Mark Kelly said, in a press conference 
that we had, that it was the most significant achievement that he has 
ever made in his entire career as an astronaut. I believe he will be 
proven right, and I think Dr. Samuel Ting will be eligible for another 
Nobel Prize in physics if we can really find the genesis of matter and 
antimatter in space, which he said we would; that you cannot duplicate 
on Earth except by trying to put these atom smashers and electron 
smashers on Earth but at much bigger expense than being able to do it 
in space where it just happens. Billions already, he said.
  So thank you. I leave the floor. I know we digress, but it is very 
exciting.
  Mr. NELSON of Florida. Well, Mr. President, as the Senator is 
leaving, I just want to say that she and I did have to stand shoulder 
to shoulder, and we had some fights. Of course, in the process we had 
some critics too. Now some of my critics wish that when I went into 
space it would have been a one-way ticket. But the fact is, it was a 
two-way, and we stood another day. The proof is in the pudding of what 
is happening up there.
  I will have something later to say, Mr. President, about the winddown 
of the space shuttle program. But while the Senator from Texas was 
here, I just wanted her to know my profound gratitude for her 
collegiality, her friendship, her expertise, and working in the way 
this Senate ought to work, which is in a bipartisan way. I thank her 
profoundly for that example that she set for the Senate and for this 
country.
  Mr. President, we are here about General Petraeus. I am a member of 
the Senate Intelligence Committee. I have had a chance to visit with 
him on a number of occasions in his capacity as general, as well as now 
the nominee, soon to be the new CIA Director.
  I would simply say that I don't think for our national security's 
sake we could have two better nominees now: the former CIA Director, 
who has been confirmed by this Senate as the new Secretary of Defense, 
taking over from an extremely good and competent Secretary of Defense, 
Secretary Gates--and, of course, that is Leon Panetta--and then for his 
shoes, as the leader of the CIA, to be filled by General Petraeus. And 
what is happening today is illustrated by the modus operandi of the 
takedown of bin Laden. It is a marriage between the intelligence 
community and the military community.
  Of course, the takedown of bin Laden was exactly that: painstaking 
years of effort to get the intelligence, since bin Laden went dark 
after he slipped through our fingers in Tora Bora, and we knew he was 
communicating by a courier. So the question was, How did we find the 
courier? Once we identified who it was, where was he? Find him and 
follow him. That, of course, led us to the compound, and when married 
up with all of that intelligence on what was going on at that compound, 
then in came the U.S. military.
  Although it was a CIA operation, as reported by the newspapers, led 
by Leon Panetta, in fact, it was a three-star admiral, a Navy SEAL, who 
conducted the actual raid from his headquarters. Of course, the SEALs 
took care of business and did it in such a proficient, effective, and 
magnificent way, and sequestered all of those women and children, save 
for the one woman, as reported in the newspaper, who got caught in the 
crossfire when the SEALs were fired at.
  So it was an absolutely 100 percent operation, and it is illustrative 
of why this appointment of General Petraeus is so important and why the 
appointment of Leon Panetta as Secretary of Defense was so important. 
These two are going to be just like that, as we are protecting the 
national security for years to come.
  That is what I want to say about General Petraeus.
  Mr. President, I would like to speak on another subject--the budget--
so I ask consent that I speak as in morning business.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.