[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 156 (2010), Part 4]
[House]
[Pages 5471-5472]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                   FUNDING THE CONSTELLATION PROGRAM

  (Mr. BISHOP of Utah asked and was given permission to address the 
House for 1 minute.)
  Mr. BISHOP of Utah. Mr. Speaker, tomorrow the President moves to 
Florida to salvage or to attempt to salvage a deteriorating political 
situation caused by accepting NASA Deputy Director Garver's poor 
decision to cancel Constellation.
  Constellation consists at least of two parts: the Orion capsule for 
the astronauts designed to be 10 times safer than the space shuttle, 
and the Aries rocket to send into space. But the alleged savings are 
more than offset by unintended consequences, because the industrial 
base that builds the rocket to put people towards the moon also builds 
the rockets to shoot down incoming missiles from North Korea, Iran, and 
other bad guys. And if you take the space component away, the defense 
side costs doubles, triples, maybe even more. And the Augustine report, 
which this administration is not following, noted this potential 
industrial-based problem, but NASA either refused to pay attention or 
chose to ignore the warning.
  Regardless, the solution to escalating defense costs and to 
maintaining the dominance in space will be dependent upon fully funding 
the Constellation

[[Page 5472]]

program. And, Mr. President, anything less than that is totally 
unacceptable.

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