Vernon Ehlers: “As has been stated, this is a labor of love for me for many years. But a few years ago I began noticing or realizing…”

“As has been stated, this is a labor of love for me for many years. But a few years ago I began noticing or realizing that we were approaching a major inflection point that we should be worried about. As you heard from the principal author of this amendment, that it was in the 1960s that John Kennedy asked for us to go to the moon, proposed this advanced and wild notion, and that inspired a whole generation of Americans to become involved in aerospace. Those individuals are now retiring. And because we hired so many in NASA at one time, they are all retiring at about the same time, which is going to leave us bereft of talent if we don't take action. Because of this, 2 years I introduced a bill which was passed which established an interagency aerospace revitalization task force within the Federal Government. I would have liked to have it be more broad, but I couldn't persuade my colleagues to make that giant leap at that point. But since then that task force which involves, I believe, 17 different Government agencies has worked together. The 2008 report of the Interagency Aerospace Revitalization Task Force was released earlier this year. I spoke at the release. And I was astounded at the number of people in the room. It was a local hotel. The room was overflowing with people concerned about aerospace employment and how we keep the aerospace effort going.”