[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 157 (2011), Part 8]
[Senate]
[Pages 11798-11799]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                           THE SPACE PROGRAM

  Mr. NELSON of Florida. Mr. President, yesterday the space shuttle 
Atlantis came back in the early morning darkness with those xenon 
lights illuminating that 3-mile-long runway at the Kennedy Space 
Center. That is a location that a century ago a set of grandparents of 
mine had homesteaded under the old Homestead Act, worked the land for 
the required 4 years. I have a copy of the deed signed by Woodrow 
Wilson in 1917 to my grandparents. Over three-quarters of a century 
later, the thought was not lost on me, when we went in that early 
morning darkness to the launchpad, that my grandparents would have 
never, ever believed that, so many years later, a grandson was going to 
literally leave the face of the Earth from almost the old homestead 
where they had to swat mosquitoes and fight off rattlesnakes and 
alligators as they eked a living out of that Florida soil.
  That was the location Atlantis came back to yesterday morning after a 
13-day flawless mission after having been launched by the finest launch 
team in the world. That launch team is now having to disperse in part 
because we are shutting down the space shuttle program after 30 
glorious years. It is an incredible flying machine, with 135 very 
successful missions that allowed us to do incredible work in space with 
human beings interacting and, of course, 2 tragic missions--the 
destruction of Challenger on ascent 25 years ago and the destruction of 
Columbia on reentry just a few years ago, in the early part of this 
last decade.
  There would not be as much angst in the space community if the new 
rockets were ready. The problem is that the rockets are being designed, 
and in some cases being built, but they then have to be human-rated; 
that is, all the redundancies for safety as well as the escape systems 
have to be designed and developed for the new rockets. One of those new 
rockets is going to fly this fall. It will launch and rendezvous with 
the International Space Station and will deliver cargo, but it is going 
to take a few years to rate that for humans. That all the more adds to 
the angst, the angst of people who have lost their jobs and now do not 
see the American rocket that is ready to fly immediately upon the 
shutdown of the space shuttle program.
  I have been surprised that we have a lot of people in America who 
think the space program is being shut down. We have an International 
Space Station up there at about 225 miles. This thing is huge. It is 
120 yards long. From one end zone to another of a football field, that 
is how big it is. There are six human beings up there doing research 
right now.
  We have trials in the Food and Drug Administration on drugs that have 
been developed on that International Space Station. The first one that 
is in trials right now is a vaccine for salmonella. Another one that is 
getting

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ready to start trials is a vaccine for MRSA, the highly infectious 
bacterial disease in hospitals that we find so difficult to control 
because you cannot get an antibiotic that will control it.
  I wanted to say for America's space team, ``a job well done.'' A 
number of us, including Senator Hutchison and myself, had introduced 
and we passed last week the resolution commemorating the men and women 
of NASA. Indeed, their congratulations and commendations are certainly 
in order on a job well done.
  The space program lives. The space program will go to greater 
heights. We will go to Mars, and we will see Americans venture out into 
the cosmos for even greater discoveries.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Illinois.

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