Bill Nelson

The ISS is the only laboratory of its kind.

It will obviate the need to bring up fuel to keep boosting the Space Station, because it will have a continuous pulse.

Ranking Member Vitter and distinguished members of the Subcommittee, thank you for the opportunity to speak to you.

Well, Dr. Katz, I come back to you. Picking up on the idea that you talked about of the ISS as a National Laboratory.

Thank you, Dr. Becker.

Thank you for the opportunity to speak to you on the benefits and applications of space based research.

Space is something that contributes to that.

It's only taken us 15 years to get here. We'd better now utilize what it has taken 15 years to build.

If the ISS were abandoned in 2016, what potential research do you think would be unrealized?

Did anything come of the growth of crystals in space. You're trying to grow a crystal that is more pure in zero G so that we could determine its molecular structure easier?

If space can give us new answers and uncover new discovery and targets, we're obligated to go there for the citizens that live here on Earth.

By the way, that's to the credit of the President; he mandated an extra flight of the Space Shuttle to accommodate the AMS.

I'm very concerned--and this is a little bit outside your ambit, but I want to make sure that you know of my concern--that we are going to lapse in our scientists...

Florida is literally the place where America has reached for the stars, and the program's viability, its continued viability, and the necessity in my mind that NASA and this country continue to explore manned space travel...

I'm a big believer if you cannot measure it, you cannot manage it.

I think that is true, and NASA has, of course, embraced this idea, provided NASA technical oversight and NASA help, which gives me greater assurance.

I think the President really has a major decision here.

How do you answer this question that we have spent $8 billion thus far on the present architecture, which includes Ares I, and now we are going to abandon that, having spent $8 billion?

Well, under that plan on this same chart, you would be late 2020s with an actual landing on the Moon?

Since we have a consensus of opinion that we need to get NASA out of LEO, do you have a preference on the architecture?

It is the additional science and technology that you get under that.

We spent over two decades constructing the ISS, and we now are talking about using it for only 5 years.

The President is going to have to answer the question whether or not the cost of human space exploration is worth it.

What was the Committee's thinking on promoting the development of on-orbit refueling?

So you are talking early 2020s you could have Ares V Lite ready.