[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 29, Number 49 (Monday, December 13, 1993)]
[Pages 2555-2558]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
Remarks in a Telephone Conversation With the Space Shuttle Endeavour 
Astronauts and an Exchange With Reporters

 December 10, 1993

    The President. Hello?
    Col. Richard O. Covey. Hello, sir.
    The President. Can you hear us?
    Col. Covey. Yes, sir, I can hear you loud and clear.
    The President. Well, the Vice President and I wanted to call you and 
congratulate you on one of the most spectacular space missions in our 
history. We're all so proud of you, and we've been able to see you do 
all those things. It's just been wonderful, and I want to thank each and 
every one of you for what you've done. You made it look easy.
    Col. Covey. Well, we appreciate the thanks and congratulations, sir. 
That's nice, particularly coming from you. As you know, great adventures 
are once-in-a-lifetime opportunities, and the seven of us were lucky to 
be able to be part of this great adventure.
    The President. I know that you know this, but you have really both 
educated and inspired people all over the world. I don't think any of us 
will ever forget the image of K.T. lifting the damaged solar panel over 
her head and then letting it go. That was a moment of high drama. Maybe 
you should come down here and help us stage our events on Earth. 
[Laughter]

[[Page 2556]]

    Mission Specialist Kathryn C. Thornton. I think it's easier to throw 
away solar panels. [Laughter]
    The President. I'm glad the press corps heard you say that. 
[Laughter]

[At this point, the Vice President offered his congratulations to the 
Astronauts and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.]

    Dr. F. Story Musgrave. I'm Story Musgrave, sir. I'm one of the EVA 
group members. As you can see now, we've got some different colors here. 
The magenta, I guess you call it, are the space walkers, and the ones up 
front there in navy blue, they're the ones that took care of us and 
launched us, took care of us during the space walks, and will bring us 
back home.
    What it took was incredible attention to detail and an incredible 
amount of energy to identify what surprises might come up and try to 
assure that we would get the job done, an immense amount of training. 
But I think it did, and the challenge was a very, very ambitious mission 
to restore Hubble, to fix the spherical aberration, to restore Hubble so 
it will be good for many, many more years of science. A very ambitious 
mission, but it did take the kind of stuff that we have, and it's mostly 
attention to detail, identifying surprises, turn over every stone, and 
give it all of the energy we've got.
    The President. It also took at least one person who is making his 
fifth journey into space. You can't imagine what a wonderful picture you 
are there. You and the two men behind you proved that you can walk in 
space with or without facial hair. [Laughter] I tell you--Yes, well--and 
he's both.
    Another thing that you did, I believe, to follow up on what the Vice 
President was saying, I think you gave an immense boost to the space 
program in general and to America's continuing venture in space. In this 
last session of Congress, we had quite a struggle to preserve the space 
station and an adequate ongoing budget for NASA because we were cutting 
so much else. I'm really gratified that we were able to do it, and I 
hope that this stunning example of what can be accomplished will really 
reinforce the support for America in space, both in the Congress and in 
the country. I think it will. All of you were just absolutely wonderful.

[At this point, the Vice President welcomed the member of the team from 
Switzerland and stated that his involvement is symbolic of the 
international nature of today's space program.]

    Mission Specialist Claude Nicollier. Well, I feel very privileged to 
have been selected for this mission as a representative of the European 
Space Agency. As you know, the European nations participated in this 
program, in the design and the manufacture and the exploitation of the 
scientific results, and I feel really very privileged and happy to have 
been selected as a crewmember, as the foreign crewmember of this 
mission.
    The President. Let's see, who have we not heard from? The rest of 
you have to talk. There's somebody back home looking for you.
    Col. Covey. Well, I was a little bit remiss, sir, and I didn't 
introduce all of the crew. You just heard from Claude Nicollier, the 
other member of the orbiter crew who did a lot of the mechanical arm 
flying. Along with Claude was my copilot, Ken Bowersox on my right here. 
And the other EVA crew members, besides K.T. and Story are Tom Akers on 
my far left and Jeff Hoffman behind me. I'm sure they would all like to 
make a statement, then I'll let Sox start off.
    Comdr. Kenneth D. Bowersox. Yes, sir, I just wanted to say I'm proud 
to be from a country that supports efforts like this. I think space 
exploration reflects the continuing pioneering spirit of the American 
people, and I think it's something we can all be proud of.
    Mission Specialist Jeffrey A. Hoffman. Hello, Mr. President. Thanks 
for your congratulations. Of course, for every one of us seven up here, 
there are literally hundreds of people on the ground, on the ground team 
who have put just as much effort and energy and talent into this mission 
to make it a success as we have. And they not only deserve the credit 
for it, but we sure wish they could be up here with us.
    Dr. Musgrave. Mr. President, I think that this mission is unique in 
another way, and that is that it has really combined two aspects

[[Page 2557]]

of space exploration. It has joined the use in space for scientific 
exploration--which the Hubble telescope is so exciting, and everyone in 
the astronomical community and all over the world is waiting to see the 
results now of the newly refurbished Hubble--and it's joined that with 
the human space program. And this is very exciting, and I think it is 
only the first part of showing what people and machines and scientific 
exploration and human ingenuity can do in the environment of space.
    The President. Well, thank you all. Let me just say again that we 
are all so proud of you, and I appreciate what each and every one of you 
have said. It's a real clear message about not only your incredible 
abilities and your courage and the support you got from all of those 
hundreds of people helping you back down here but of the profound 
importance of our country continuing its adventures in space. We depend 
on it down here for so much scientific knowledge, and we're going to do 
what we can do to support you and to support NASA and to support the 
space program. And you have taken an enormous step forward for building 
that kind of support, not just in the minds but in the hearts and the 
spirits of the American people. And you've done it with great good 
humor. And we thank you so much.
    The Vice President. Thank you, a wonderful, inspiring success story.
    Col. Covey. Well, we truly appreciate those words, and we thank you 
for taking the time to talk with us now and also for taking the time to 
be supportive of our Nation's space programs. It's very important to us, 
and I can't tell you how proud we are to be able to represent those 
programs and to be able to help bring NASA back to new heights if we can 
do that.
    The President. You already have. Thanks.
    Astronauts. Thank you.
    The President. Good luck.

[At this point, the telephone conversation ended and the President 
answered reporters' questions.]

Space Program

    Q. Mr. President, do you believe that this flight was a make-or-
break effort for NASA?
    The President. I don't know about that. I think that this flight's 
success will plainly illustrate the importance of NASA's many missions 
and reinforce the understanding of that importance in the American 
people and the support for it.
    The Vice President. It's just the pressurization. [Laughter]
    The President. I thought it was someone hissing at my response. 
[Laughter]
    Q. Is it a new lease on life for the space program?
    The President. Well, I think the space program got a new lease on 
life in this last session of Congress after the completion of the Best 
report and the redesign of the space station and Congress reaffirming 
the support for the space station. And then the support we've achieved, 
at least from the leadership, the appropriate committees in Congress, 
for the Russian participation in the whole continuing vision of the 
space station, I think that was very important. But this probably will 
galvanize the public's imagination and support again in a way that 
nothing we could have ever done in this town would have accomplished.

Gun Control

    Q. Sir, on a more down-to-earth issue, are you ready to fully 
endorse this idea of gun ownership licensing and registration?
    The President. Well, as I said, there are a whole lot of different 
ideas that have been advanced in this whole area, including a much 
better oversight of people who actually sell weapons in the country and 
a whole series of things on that. That's a question of Federal 
registration, as well as some State and local registration, too, at 
least for over-the-counter sales. And there are any number of other 
issues.
    Keep in mind, I keep saying we have to do these things one at a 
time. The crime bill with the amendment by Senator Feinstein which 
passed the Senate has not yet passed the House. That's a very important 
step because that will be a measure of the willingness of the Congress 
to move forward here in banning some of these assault weapons. But 
another big step will be getting the Federal Government, the Treasury 
Department, ATF, the capacity to define identical assault

[[Page 2558]]

weapons that may not be mentioned by name in the law but that are the 
same thing with just some minor modification to try to get around the 
law. In other words, there are a whole set of issues here that I believe 
we have to look at and make decisions on and then set up a set of 
priorities based on how much we can get done how quickly.
    On the issue of the registration of either the guns themselves or 
the people who own them, you know, in the question of automobiles we 
have both people registered, you know, people have an automobile 
license, and the cars themselves are registered. And that's all done at 
the State level, but a lot of the information is in national computers 
for law enforcement purposes. For example, if someone steals your car 
today and drives it to another State and leaves it in the parking lot of 
a shopping center and it's found, the license number could be fed back 
into the computer, and you could be told within a matter of a few 
seconds, normally, that your car's been turned up and where it is. So 
what I am doing now is to ask the Justice Department to work with our 
staff to analyze all these proposals both on the merits, if it's right 
or wrong, and secondly, for the details, how could it be done, and 
thirdly, what should we do in what order. And that's what I'm looking at 
now.
    The main thing I can tell you is that we are committed to going 
further. The Brady bill was a good first step. It will save some lives, 
especially for people who have established records of mental problems or 
clear criminal records. But it is nowhere near enough. It is the 
beginning, and we have got to move forward.
    Q. The North Koreans----
    The President. You heard my answer. I just think it is very 
important that we know exactly what we're talking about: How would it be 
done? What are the mechanics? How does it rank in order of priority with 
these other things we have to do, both in terms of what's most urgent, 
number one, and number two, what can we most likely get done quickest?
    And let me just emphasize, if you look, there was a study in one of 
the papers just in the last 10 days on the deaths of young people by 
gunshot in one of our major cities which concluded that the increase in 
the death rate was attributable over a brief period of time, like over 
the last 5 years--we're not talking about 20 but over the last 5 years--
entirely to the dramatic increase in the use of semiautomatic assault 
weapons as opposed to single-shot guns. That single thing had raised the 
death rate in the last 4 or 5 years more than any other thing.
    So, there are lots of issues here. We're going to try to deal with 
them all in an aggressive and forthright way, but we have to figure out 
exactly what to do and in what order. The possibility of movement here 
has just opened up, and the American people need to keep the pressure 
on, and we'll keep moving.

North Korea

    Q. Mr. President, the North Koreans seemed pretty inflexible 
yesterday in their statement about their offer being ``take it or leave 
it.'' Is there more flexibility in private than they're showing in 
public?
    The President. Well, let me just say we have some hope for the 
continuing discussions. When negotiations are going on, I'm always 
reluctant to characterize them one way or the other, whether it's GATT 
or with North Korea. I just don't want to do that. But if you've asked 
me, have I given up on the discussions, the answer to that is no. We're 
aggressively pursuing them.

Note: The President spoke at 8:37 a.m. in the Oval Office at the White 
House.