[Congressional Record Volume 162, Number 7 (Tuesday, January 12, 2016)]
[Senate]
[Pages S45-S46]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




       MISSION TO MARS AND SPACE SHUTTLE FLIGHT 30TH ANNIVERSARY

  Mr. NELSON. Mr. President, we are going to Mars--Mars or bust. We are 
going to send a human crew to Mars in the decade of the 2030s. We are 
right at the cusp of the breakthrough to show how this is possible. I 
have just returned from the Kennedy Space Center, meeting with its 
Director, Bob Cabana. All of the ground infrastructure--the two launch 
pads--are being reconfigured. Old abandoned launch pads on Cape 
Canaveral Air Force Station are being redone with new commercial launch 
pads.
  Less than 2 years from right now, in September of 2017, we will be 
launching Americans again on American rockets to go to and from the 
International Space Station. Three years from now, we will be launching 
the full-up test of the largest and most powerful rocket ever invented 
by mankind, the Space Launch System, with its spacecraft Orion, which 
will be the forerunner that will ultimately take us to Mars.
  This appropriations bill that we passed just before Christmas treats 
NASA with a decent increase of over $1 billion and puts the resources 
into each part of NASA--its scientific programs, its technology 
programs, its exploration programs, its aviation, and especially 
aviation research programs--to keep us moving forward in our 
development of technology.
  I am especially enthusiastic about bringing this message because 30 
years ago today, I had the privilege of launching on the 24th flight of 
the space shuttle into the heavens for a 6-day mission. Let me tell you 
about some of the members of this crew, just to give you an idea of how 
accomplished these people are.
  In NASA terminology in the space shuttle, the commander sits on the 
left seat; on the right seat, his pilot--in effect, his copilot. He 
handles all of the systems. In almost all cases, those pilot astronauts 
are military test pilots. They are so good that when they land that 
space shuttle without an engine, they have one chance; they are so good 
they can put it on a dime.
  Of course, our crew, 30 years ago launching from pad 39-A--the same 
pad that I saw on Saturday that has now been transformed into a 
commercial launch pad under lease to SpaceX--that crew was the best of 
the best. The two pilot astronauts were naval aviators. In the left 
seat was CDR Hoot Gibson--Robert Gibson, the best stick-and-rudder guy 
in the whole astronaut office. He could put it down, and you would 
hardly know that the wheels had touched.
  In the right seat, then Marine colonel, now Marine general, retired, 
Charlie Bolden, who then went on to command three missions thereafter, 
and today is--for the last 7 years--the Administrator of NASA. He is 
the one who has transformed NASA and has us going in the right 
direction now to go to Mars and at the same time working out the 
arrangements for the commercial marketplace to flourish, as we are 
seeing with Boeing and SpaceX, which will be the two rockets that will 
launch in less than 2 years, taking Americans to and from the 
International Space Station.
  Let me tell you about the rest of the crew that launched 30 years ago 
today. The flight engineer, Steve Hawley, an astrophysicist. By the 
way, he is the one who deployed for the first time the Hubble Space 
Telescope. An astrophysicist, Dr. George ``Pinky'' Nelson. By the way, 
all of these guys are doctors. They are Ph.D.s. Also, Dr. Franklin 
Chang-Diaz, an astronaut who came to America from Costa Rica--not 
speaking a word of English after high school and taught himself 
English. He has a Ph.D. in plasma physics from MIT. While he was still 
flying, seven times as an astronaut, he was building a plasma 
rocket. Today that plasma rocket is one of the propulsion systems that 
NASA is considering when we go to Mars. If you saw the Matt Damon 
movie, ``The Martian,'' the author of the book had consulted with 
Franklin about the technology that is referenced in the book as the 
propulsion that sent that spacecraft to and from Mars. Another is 
engineer Bob Cenker, an RCA engineer. We launched an RCA communications 
satellite in the course of the mission.

  The seventh is yours truly. I performed 12 medical experiments, the 
primary of which was a protein crystal growth experiment in zero-g, 
sponsored by the medical school at the University of Alabama at 
Birmingham--their comprehensive cancer center. The theory was if you 
could grow protein crystals--and out of the influence of gravity--then 
you could grow them larger and more pure, so when you brought them back 
to Earth, examining them either through x-ray defraction or an electron 
microscope, you could unlock the secrets of their architecture and get 
the molecular structure.
  I also performed the first American stress test in space in an 
unmechanized treadmill. You wonder how in zero-g you can propel 
yourself running on a treadmill. I had to put on a harness with bungee 
cords that would force me down onto the treadmill, and I pulled and 
pushed with my feet. We were trying to see what happens to our 
astronauts who go outside on spacewalks. Their hearts would start 
skipping beats. So the idea was to get the heart rate up and use me as 
a comparison.
  Indeed, what happened was I ran for 20 minutes, pulling and pushing. 
Lo and behold I discovered that the tape recorder was not working and 
had to repeat it. It made so much racket in that small confined space 
that our crew was mighty happy when I finished. Thus, the space doctors 
had additional data to study, and they have published that. We thought 
it was the first stress test in space, but later on we found out that 
the Soviets had done stress tests--we don't know how long.

[[Page S46]]

  On this occasion, 30 years later, of something that was 
transformative to me, I wish to say I am so optimistic of where we are 
going because we are going to Mars. If you ask the average American on 
the street, they think the space program is shut down because they 
visualize it as the shutting down of the space shuttle, but they will 
be reminded, reenergized, enthused and excited--as only human space 
flight can do--when those rockets start lifting off at the Cape in 
September of 2017, in less than 2 years, and we are beginning on our 
way to Mars.
  I thank the Presiding Officer for this opportunity on this 30th 
anniversary.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Pennsylvania.

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