Just like we did in Apollo, which was an incremental mission, starting with Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, in an environment that we did not know anything about.

Sequestration, this meat cleaver that is hanging over the Federal budget at the end of the year, was never intended to take effect.

I think setting the goal is terribly important for eliciting potential innovations.

It would also be helpful if you could report from the NRC to us on the Committee on an evaluation of the administration's plan under the NASA authorization bill for the exploration program with regard to Mars.

Now you are talking about the funding of it. Well, the funding--and there again, I thank Senator Hutchison because she is on the Appropriations Committee as well.

But still the uncertainty of the funding of the future.

the average American thinks that the space program is over because they have attached the visible evidences of the space program naturally to the Space Shuttle.

when Apollo was developed, other than the goal of getting to the Moon and back, it was also then utilized for other things, a thaw in the Cold War.

I would suggest that in your position with the NRC's Space Studies Board, you might want to have them look at this topic--the impacts to the space program of the different funding scenarios, including sequestration, even though this…

The authorization in 2010 set the course, the blueprint, for the SLS and set the parameters.

As President Kennedy said of space, 'Its hazards are hostile to us all. Its conquest deserves the best of all mankind.'