Bill Nelson: “I have been amazed as I have watched this entire space team knowing that the Space Shuttle is likely to come to an end.”

It is a real problem, and we are going to have some catastrophic consequences if we cannot get nations that are launching things into space to provide enough fuel to have a controlled reentry.

One of the reasons you and I were able to accomplish so much on this committee is both of us worked very hard to keep politics out of NASA and to focus on the core mission of exploration.

We do everything that we can to partner with not only commercial industry but also universities and other academic institutions.

It will fly supersonic but its design is such a radical design, that instead of pushing the bow wave going through the atmosphere, as you go from subsonic to supersonic, which causes that audible sound that goes 'boom, boom,' it will…