Dana Rohrabacher: “Mr. Speaker, the conquests of the frontier and the development of new technology is how we have defined ourselves as…”

“Mr. Speaker, the conquests of the frontier and the development of new technology is how we have defined ourselves as Americans from the clipper ships to the railroads to heavier-than-air flight, which was, by the way, established only 100 years ago this year by two American bicycle shop owners. One hundred years of heavier-than-air flight, and now we are engaged in the conquest of outerspace. As man ascended into the air after the Wright Brothers successfully accomplished the first flight, many lives were lost in the historic task of creating the technology that now enables us to circumvent the world and has brought every person in the world together. Now, as in the early stages of the engineering and development of technology that provided us with this conquest of the air, we are engaged in the development of engineering and technology that will move us into the heavens, into space. But there is a price to pay as America moves forward with technology and as America moves forward in the conquest of this last frontier. Space pioneers, as those on the shuttles Challenger and Columbia, are those who take the greatest risk and have paid the heaviest price. That is why they are heroes. They risk their lives to lift all of humankind.”