Bill Nelson

The strategy you've settled on maximizes the chances of success, maximizes the chances that we will be able to ultimately leave Afghanistan, not temporarily, but permanently, while securing the national security interests of the United…

We will not repeat the mistakes of 1989, when we abandoned the country only to see it descend into civil war and then into Taliban hands.

But you are an example of what's happening with this explosion of technology. We have people that are now, instead of using a crowbar to steal, now use technological improvements, and they're doing the same thing.

We're going to try to do something about it, and thanks to you, Mr. Chairman.

I've had national security on my side, because that's the largest training and testing area for the United States military in the world.

I can rail all day about protecting Florida's coastline and our $65-billion-a-year tourism industry that depends on beaches that don't have tar balls on them.

I'm all for that, because I was the author of working out, in 2006, to give the oil industry an additional 8.3 million acres.

I want to thank Senator Nelson and his staff for their continued support of our tribe in this process.

While the bill that I had filed had a hearing, it never made it to the Senate Floor.

I am here to mirror the frustration that you all have just expressed in your opening comments with a process that needs to be repaired and that needs to be improved.

They participated in the Federal acknowledgement process in 1978, that is 31 years ago, without a decision.

If we give up that pursuit, we become a second-rate nation.

If we retreat, if we just say we confine ourselves to low-Earth orbit, we grant the high ground to whoever can get there from other nations.

If we're not traveling beyond lower Earth orbit and we're not really exploring, then I think we're doing a disservice to the recommendations of the Columbia Accident Investigation Board.

I think that is the reason why we would do a disservice to the Columbia results.

The Augustine Commission is saying that we're basically flat if we don't get $3 billion more a year for NASA for the human spaceflight program; $30 billion over 10 years.

There is no finer example of long-lived high technology challenging international cooperation than the International Space Station.

That has been--endured a number of different shocks to the system.

It better not be too far down the list.

There has been enormous collateral damage in the rest of the human spaceflight program as a result.

We do not fund our space program at the level that we should and therefore, it does not contribute to the national agenda as it could.

It has been suggested that NASA have a DARPA for these advanced projects. Do you think that would allow more entrepreneurial activity?

As I ask a series of questions of you all, I want you to be thinking about, at some point, I will want each of you to talk about examples of the tangible benefits from the space program, specifically the human space program, and the…

A game-changer is something that really only we or a small number of countries are uniquely able to do.

We refer to it in the scientific community as 'scientific genocide' on the part of NASA.