[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 162 (2016), Part 2]
[Senate]
[Pages 1530-1531]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                  THE PRESIDENT'S SPACE PROGRAM BUDGET

  Mr. NELSON. Mr. President, I come to the floor to speak about the 
President's proposal with regard to our space budget, the civilian 
space program, and NASA. Of course we have many other space programs, 
primarily national security, but now there is a commercial space 
program. We are seeing the burgeoning commercial space industry in the 
NASA budget. We are amazed by the rockets which can take the first 
stage--instead of throwing it away when it lands in the Atlantic Ocean 
after a launch from Cape Canaveral--under powered flight, even without 
parachutes, can come back and land on a specific spot, just as SpaceX 
did in its first stage in a launch about 2 months ago. We are seeing 
commercial space.
  The fact that these things we carry around in our pockets that we 
loosely refer to as phones that know exactly where we are at any time 
is as a result of a constellation of satellites up there called GPS 
that triangulate and calculate exactly where we are. It is absolutely 
amazing to me that my latest gadgetry acquisition--a Fitbit--can so 
sensitively understand what my heart rate is at any moment, can measure 
distance, and gives me all kinds of information about the functioning 
of the human body.
  Well, this didn't just accidentally appear. Where in the world did a 
lot of this come from? It came from the space program. I wish to talk 
about that, but first I want to underscore something. Other than its 
pioneering, for example, of increased investments in aeronautics, which 
is the first ``A'' in ``NASA''--the National Aeronautics and Space 
Administration--there are other parts of the President's proposal that 
have been left behind in the visionary appropriations bill we passed 
back in the middle of December which has sent us on a course that we 
are going to Mars. We are preparing to go to Mars, and that is a long 
way. In order to sustain human life and go all the way there--land, 
survive, reignite off the surface of Mars--and, by the way, I commend 
the Matt Damon movie ``The Martian.'' The author of the book which the 
movie came from actually consulted with a number of folks, including 
one of my crewmates, on the propulsion, how to get to Mars a lot 
quicker. That propulsion uses magnets and plasma as its fuel and thrust 
to get us to Mars, and instead of the conventional 8 to 10 months, we 
could get there in as little as 39 days. But those are to-be-developed 
technologies.
  Let me mention a couple of things we are developing. Folks often 
argue about the NASA budget, which back in the lunar days the Apollo 
Program was as much as 4 percent of the entire Federal budget. Now it 
is about one-half of 1 percent. In the process of divvying up the 
dollars out here, we pull and tug because people will ask: Why do we 
need to go to Mars? Why do we need to go to an asteroid in preparation 
to go to Mars? Why do we need a space program when we have so many 
needs here on Earth? That is a legitimate question. What is the 
legitimate answer? Do you appreciate the fact that we have MRIs and CT 
scans? MRIs--magnetic resonance imaging--and CT scans--computer-aided 
tomography--technologies that are used routinely today to help us so 
much in a diagnosis of what is wrong or what is right in our own human 
bodies and is part of this medical miracle that we know as modern 
medicine--they came straight out of the space program.
  In the 1960s, NASA had to find a safe landing spot for the Apollo 
lunar lander amid all of that Moon surface and all of that dust. So 
what happened was the engineers at JPL out in California developed a 
digital scanning process using high-frequency sound waves, magnets, and 
computers. In addition to making six successful Moon landings, this 
technology was tweaked, adapted, improved, and it led to CT scans and 
MRIs.
  How about robots in the use of modern medicine? How about robots in 
the use of the manufacturing process? Well, my colleagues will remember 
the one thing on the space shuttle that had the name of another 
country; it was the Canadarm. It was the robotic arm that was birthed 
in the cargo bay of the space shuttle. It was used to deploy, maneuver, 
and capture payloads. It has now been the forerunner of the neuroArm, a 
surgical device that has successfully performed dozens of tumor 
removals by robotic surgery.
  Now, any of the males around here over the age of 50 ought to be 
concerned about prostate cancer. They have a robot named DA Vinci that 
is built in California, even though it is named after Leonardo da 
Vinci, and this robotic device, with a small incision--six times--can 
go in and, with some of this precise photography that was developed for 
these cameras, robotically remove, in this case, the prostate cancer by 
removing the prostate without damaging the nerves and

[[Page 1531]]

without cutting the human body open, which takes so much more time to 
heal, instead of just sticking six holes in. That came directly out of 
the space program. It is being used to develop an image-guided 
autonomous robot for use in the early detection of breast cancer.
  Let me give my colleagues another idea. When we get on a modern 
airliner today and we look out the window and we look at that swept-
back wing, what do we see out there on the tip of the wing? The wing 
doesn't just stop as it normally does; it curves up. This is called a 
winglet. The winglets have these upturned features. They save billions 
of dollars in fuel costs.
  Now, with NASA technology at the Langley Research Center and now the 
tests conducted at the Dryden Flight Center--now named, after the first 
astronaut on the moon, the Armstrong Flight Center--this winglet 
technology was released to Boeing, and it has saved the airline 
industry more than 2 billion gallons of jet fuel, and it has saved more 
than $4 billion in jet fuel costs and a reduction of almost 21.5 
million tons of carbon dioxide emissions, just by the design of the 
wing. That technology came directly out of NASA.
  Here is another example. All of this is coming back to this: Why go 
to space? Well, we go to space because our nature is that we are 
explorers and adventurers. We go there because we haven't been there. 
We go there to explore. Our nature is one of pioneers. The frontier is 
now not westward, as it was in the beginning of this country, but 
upward. So that is certainly a reason to have the space program, but 
let me tell my colleagues more of how it applies to our daily lives.
  How about fortified baby formula? Early 1980s research on 
regenerative ecosystems led to a method of algae-based food supplements 
that provide the long-chain polysaturated fatty acids that support 
brain and eye development and function. So this led to a spinoff 
product called Formulaid, which was patented in 1996. It can now be 
found in over 90 percent of infant formula sold in the United States as 
well as those sold around the world.
  I will give another example: image sensors--image sensors to enhance 
cell phone cameras. In the 1990s, a NASA team had been improving 
digital image sensors in order to miniaturize cameras on spacecraft 
while maintaining the scientific image quality. So this was spun off 
into commerce, and the company that commercialized the technology has 
shipped over 1 billion sensors for use in applications such as--now, 
does this sound familiar--digital cameras, camera phones, web cameras, 
automotive cameras. They are even developing something where you will 
swallow a pill; only it is not a pill. It is an ingestible camera for 
imaging the patient's gastrointestinal tract.
  Let me tell my colleagues about another one. I had a visit from 
Tallahassee Community College today. They showed me what they could do 
with a 3-D printer. I ask unanimous consent to show this in front of 
the Senate.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Ms. Ayotte). Without objection, it is so 
ordered.
  Mr. NELSON. We are doing this on the space station right now. We are 
putting together tools so that if we don't have a tool in space or if 
we were on the long journey to Mars and we did not have a tool that we 
needed to repair something, we could send the messages up to the 
spacecraft and 3-D print the tools that we need. So long-term space 
missions like the one to Mars are going to benefit from this onboard 
manufacturing capability.
  Spare parts--what happens if we get up there and we don't have 
enough? Well, we can print it. Engineers are even experimenting with 
creating a completely 3-D printed high-performance rocket engine. Can 
my colleagues believe that? So that would advance manufacturing 
technologies that could benefit a number of us right here on the face 
of the Earth.
  So the excitement of this--even though some would look at the 
President's request for NASA and see that it is $600 million over what 
he requested last year, but it is actually almost flat-line to what we 
actually appropriated. Don't be discouraged by that because in this 
sense the excitement is gathering as we are about to launch humans--
Americans on American rockets. That is going to occur next year, as we 
send crews to and from the International Space Station. As a result, we 
therefore do not have to rely on the proven Russian Soyuz that gets our 
crews to and from today. Now we will have the capability of not only 
transporting cargo to and from but our American astronauts.
  Even though the President's request falls short in some areas, I 
think the President's request has been overcome with what we have done 
here in the Congress, with a substantial increase in this current 
fiscal year over and above last year and with the excitement of human 
space flight again within our grasp on American rockets, as well as 
this excitement of defining, creating, and manufacturing new 
technologies for space flight that will benefit us here on the face of 
the Earth.
  If it sounds like I am a cheerleader, indeed I am a cheerleader. When 
I see the miracles of modern medicine, when I see the increased 
capabilities of exploring the heavens and now almost back to the 
original light emitted from the big bang, and when we start to uncover 
the new discoveries that expand our horizons, indeed, I am a 
cheerleader. For that, I am grateful.
  I commend the Senate to keep this space program going at a fast pace 
as we increasingly get back into the total business, both manned and 
unmanned, of space exploration.
  Madam President, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Arkansas.
  (The remarks of Mr. Cotton pertaining to the introduction of S. 2123 
are printed in today's Record under ``Statements on Introduced Bills 
and Joint Resolutions.'')
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Connecticut.

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