Marco Rubio: “I thank my colleague, the distinguished Senator from Colorado, as I pick up where he left off on the space program.…”

“I thank my colleague, the distinguished Senator from Colorado, as I pick up where he left off on the space program. Thirty years ago, the United States launched the first space shuttle mission from Kennedy Space Center in Florida. It marked a new era of American leadership in space and showed, once again, that Americans would continue to be committed to being first in space and on the cutting edge of scientific progress to improve our lives. It also showed what free people--committed to discovery, to innovation, to improving the lives of their fellow man--can accomplish. President Ronald Reagan said it best when he kicked off the space station program in 1984 . . . ``We are first; we are the best; and we are so because we're free.'' Over these 30 years, we have been witness to many heroic triumphs in space that have served as a testament to America's unparalleled ingenuity and imagination. Over time, the shuttle program would make household names out of some. Sally Ride became the first American woman to travel into space. One shuttle alum even serves with us in the Senate today--our colleague, Bill Nelson. Of course, space exploration has always entailed risk-taking. It has always required putting one's life on the line. And because of this, the space shuttle program's history also gave us moments of great pain as we lost Christa McAuliffe and the Challenger crew in 1986, and the Columbia crew in 2003.…”