[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 160 (2014), Part 9]
[Senate]
[Pages 12541-12542]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                45-YEAR ANNIVERSARY OF THE LUNAR LANDING

  Mr. NELSON. Mr. President, 45 years ago yesterday the entire world 
was riveted to their television sets--often a television image that was 
grainy, black and white, and flickering--as we heard the report, ``The 
eagle has landed.'' Then we saw Neil Armstrong come down the ladder of 
the lunar lander, and that is when he made the famous statement, 
``That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.''
  In the context of that day 45 years ago, unless one was of sufficient 
youth to not have a memory, anyone will remember exactly where they 
were and what they were doing, because that was an extraordinary time 
for the entire planet. This Senator at the time was an Army lieutenant. 
At the lift-off 4 days earlier, I had been in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, and 
had gone to the embassy asking if they had a television so I could 
watch the lift-off in my hometown area of Brevard County where, from 
this launch pad, my family had homesteaded under the old Homestead Act 
in 1913, working the land for years, eking out a living which, under 
the Homestead Act, was a way of populating the country--particularly 
the westward expansion but that was also the southward expansion, into 
unsettled lands like Florida. I have a copy of that deed of 160 acres 
of land, signed by Woodrow Wilson to my grandparents in 1917. That land 
sits today at the north end of the space shuttle runway at the Kennedy 
Space Center. It is only a few miles from the launch pad where Apollo 
11 launched, and years later in the early part of the Space Shuttle 
Program I had the privilege of launching with the crew of STS-61C.
  But at that moment 45 years ago, I had gone into the embassy in 
Belgrade, and they did not have a television set that would show the 
lift-off. I asked if there was any way of getting a communication. They 
said: Go outside of the city on those high hills and stick up your 
shortwave radio antenna and get the BBC from London. My friends and I 
did exactly that. When that rocket, the Saturn V, lifted off, there 
were three young Americans screaming at the top of our lungs: ``Go, 
baby, go.''
  Four days later, I was on my way back to the United States and was 
staying overnight in a London hotel. I got the desk to call me in the 
middle of the night, somewhere around 3:00, and turned on that 
flickering black-and-white television set to see Neil Armstrong come 
down the ladder and issue that famous statement.
  Today at the Kennedy Space Center is a ceremony commemorating that 
event 45 years ago yesterday. I happened to bump into Buzz Aldrin 
yesterday at the Orlando airport as he was on his way to join with Mike 
Collins, who was the third of the three Apollo astronauts. They are 
there today to dedicate the operations and checkout building at the 
Kennedy Space Center to be named for the commander of that mission and 
the first one to set foot on the Moon--Neil Armstrong. It is that very 
same building where those astronauts were in quarantine before they 
went to the launch pad, it is that very same building where so many of 
the space missions have been prepared, and it is that very same 
building, now named for Neil Armstrong, which is preparing the 
spacecraft that will be the forerunner of taking us in our next journey 
to another celestial body--this time the planet Mars.
  That spacecraft, Orion, will be tested at the end of this year in a 
ballistic reentry, going out some 30,000 miles, to come back in at a 
very steep descent to test the new protective materials on

[[Page 12542]]

the heat shield. In the old days we had an ablative material on the 
blunt end of the capsule that would burn up on reentry coming through 
the fiery heat of reentry, 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit. Part of the heat 
shield would burn up. Today, they have much more high-technology 
techniques that will repel the heat in order to save the crew, and that 
test will come at the end of the year.
  When we shut down the Space Shuttle Program, most Americans felt as 
though the human space program was shut down. That is not the case. We 
have an orbiting national laboratory that is part of the International 
Space Station, with two American astronauts and an international crew--
a total of six astronauts onboard, doing research right now, as they 
have been.
  As a matter of fact, to give a visual mind's-eye idea of how big this 
International Space Station is, it is 120 yards long. Visualize from 
one goalpost and one end zone to the other goalpost, and that is how 
big the International Space Station is, and six humans are on board 
right now.
  We are already developing the rockets that are delivering cargo--
American rockets--and those rockets are now in a competition in NASA as 
to which ones will be selected to carry humans, and then all of the 
redesign, the redundancies of systems, the escape mechanisms, will be 
incorporated in order to make it safe for humans. We are expecting that 
first American launch of Americans onboard American rockets to be in 
2017. Then the American people will realize that we have been in space 
all along.
  We can speak of the wonders of our space program--the Hubble space 
telescope that has been on orbit carried by a human crew that has now 
unlocked the secrets of the universe. The follow-on telescope named 
after the first NASA Administrator James Webb will peer back in time to 
the very beginning of the universe and will bring us additional 
knowledge about how we got here and how it all started in this 
incredibly infinite thing called the universe, of which the cosmos as 
we look out is so large we can't comprehend it.
  Our space program is vigorous, and now we will move into a new era 
starting right there in the building that is being dedicated today in 
memory of Neil Armstrong, a building that will assemble the spacecraft 
called Orion which will launch with Americans in 2021 for the beginning 
of a mission that will capture a distant object--an asteroid--fly to 
it, rendezvous, explore it, as we start the systems, the methods, 
building and creating the new technologies that will then allow us to 
take a human crew all the way to the planet Mars, land them, and bring 
them back safely to planet Earth.
  So this is a day that we remember, and we remember an astronaut who 
was taken way too early from us, because Neil was only 82 years old.
  Although of the original seven, which Neil was not a part of, we only 
have one left; that is, John Glenn, the first American to orbit the 
Earth, a former Senator of this body in his nineties. He looks 
terrific.
  After the Mercury Program came the Gemini Program and then came the 
Apollo Program, and that is the celebration that has just occurred, 
celebrating 45 years. It is hard to believe it has been that long. Yet 
that was a day the world stopped as they gazed, fixed on their 
television sets, as a human from planet Earth set foot on another 
celestial body. That was quite an accomplishment, but there is a lot 
more to come.
  I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Ms. STABENOW. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so 
ordered.

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