[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 146 (2000), Part 13]
[Senate]
[Page 18674]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]



            MARSHALL SPACE FLIGHT CENTER'S 40TH ANNIVERSARY

  Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, today we are celebrating the 
accomplishments of the men and women of the Marshall Space Flight 
Center in Huntsville, AL, on the occasion of their 40th anniversary 
which will be celebrated tomorrow.
  In September of 1960, President Dwight Eisenhower dedicated the 
Marshall Space Flight Center, which soon began making history under the 
leadership of Dr. Wernher von Braun. From the Mercury-Redstone vehicle 
that placed America's first astronaut, Alan Shepard, into suborbital 
space in 1961, to the mammoth Saturn V rocket that launched humans to 
the moon in 1969, Marshall and its industry partners have successfully 
engineered history making projects that gave, and continue to give, 
America the world's premier space program.
  We are fortunate to have these dedicated men and women in Huntsville. 
I will be offering some remarks and hope to speak on the floor again 
later today. I take this opportunity to express my compliments and 
those of the American people to the men and women at Marshall Space 
Flight Center, which began 40 years ago, sent men to the moon, and now 
is working steadfastly to create a cost-efficient, effective way to 
send people into space routinely, almost as easily as we fly now across 
the Atlantic Ocean.

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