Political Quotes

“Mr. President, I just learned that the CJS subcommittee of the Appropriations Committee reported a bill out that made a substantial cut in the request for commercial crew in order for us to be able to have Americans flying on American rockets to and from the International Space Station, instead of having to rely on the Russian Soyuz, which we buy and have been buying those ever since we shut down the space shuttle at something like $60 million to $70 million per passenger going up to the space station. Now, the whole idea was that since we cooperated with the Russians in building this space station, we would both have the means of transportation to get up there. We do have the means of transportation of getting cargo to and from the space station, since we shut down the space shuttle, but we are in the process of a competition between several companies--especially those that have been selected in the competition by NASA, Boeing and SpaceX. Each of them has been granted money to develop all of the redundancies and safety and escape systems in their spacecraft capsule in order to make it safe for Americans to go to and from the International Space Station. Now, I can tell you that for the average American on the street, their image of our space program is one that since the space shuttle shut down in 2011, they think the space program is over, when, in fact, it is really just beginning, and we are going to Mars in the decade of the 2030s.…”