Bill Nelson

Yes, ma'am, and let me give you a specific answer to your question.

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

There are, in fact, private companies that are getting into the business now of supersonic transports, but they do not have this characteristic.

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…

What we are going to do is a multi-year test, taking it to different locations all over the United States, and see if the muffled roar is acceptable to the people on the ground.

The X-59, which is this extraordinarily super designed needle-nosed aircraft is going to fly at the end of this year.

Is there a market out there to cut that almost in half? And I suspect there is.

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.

I want to see it increase and, thus, all the more reason that you all need to keep us out of budgetary chaos.

This time, even on the first crew, the ones that are coming here to Capitol Hill today, our first international astronaut is Jeremy Hansen.

Our seed corn is research and development. We do not want to ever give that up, and that is the mission of NASA.

We go with commercial partners because the third mission, we are going into lunar orbit.

We cannot identify every object. However, NEO Surveyor will be able to identify 90 percent of all the potential asteroids that are greater than 140 meters wide within the 10 years of the launch.

I would say that there is a significant difference of opinion about that.

The President's Budget request for NASA is an investment in our Nation's future.

You and I in this committee have a different approach to what is happening to the earth's climate.

I commend you for a multi-year proposal.

That would mean 25 percent less fuel, which is a good thing for the airlines, but might also be a good thing in the overall energy policy of the country.

I think what you have said, a 5-year authorization bill, would be very, very well received in the aerospace community.

Indeed I do, and another thing that you were looking at is thermoplastic composites as a new material...

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.

If we show up at the Shackleton Crater, I highly doubt the communist--Chinese Communist Party will care much about how we have advanced an equity action plan.

We cannot operate our science agencies on the cheap, and we should not operate them without clear, multi-year direction.

Continued Congressional support is critical to the success of the CLD program.

For NASA to continue to innovate, we need to attract the next generation of engineers, inventors, chemists, biologists, astronauts, and so much more.