David Weldon: “Space is important to the future of our country. We are a Nation of pioneers. We are a Nation of explorers. We lead the…”

“Space is important to the future of our country. We are a Nation of pioneers. We are a Nation of explorers. We lead the world in science and technology. Everywhere I go as I travel around the United States, I see images at schools, at universities, and in airports of our space program. Frequently I will see pictures or images of the Shuttle or of our Apollo pioneers; and the reason for that I think is obvious. It is in our blood, it is in our nature. Indeed, the gentleman mentioned I am a physician and practiced medicine for 15 years before I was elected, and I still see patients once a month at the VA clinic in my congressional district; and I always marvel at the daily application of space technology, spin-off technologies directly from our Shuttle program, from our Apollo program, even from some of our unmanned probes. I have a contractor in my congressional district who has taken the NASA coolant technology used to cool the systems in these planetary probes that we use and has placed it in car and home air conditioner units and believes he can improve the efficiency of these air conditioner units by as much as 15 percent.”