Political Quotes

“Madam Speaker, I rise today to honor the Gallaudet Eleven and highlight their important yet seemingly unknown contributions during the space race, contributions that led to invaluable scientific knowledge and, eventually, the successful Apollo 11 Moon landing. Before NASA could send humans to space, the agency needed to better understand the effects of prolonged weightlessness on the human body. So, in the late 1950s, NASA and the U.S. Naval School of Aviation Medicine established a joint research program to study these effects. They recruited 11 deaf men from Gallaudet University: Harold Domich, Robert Greenmun, Barron Gulak, Raymond Harper, Jerald Jordan, Harry Larson, David Myers, Donald Peterson, Raymond Piper, Alvin Steele, and John Zakutney. All but one of these men had lost their hearing early in their lives due to spinal meningitis, which damaged the vestibular system of their inner ear in a way that made them immune to motion sickness. Now known as the Gallaudet Eleven, these men underwent extensive testing over the course of 10 years, pushing their bodies to the limits to advance our space program. The testing and experiments included living 12 days straight inside a 20-foot slow rotation room, which remained in a constant motion of 10 revolutions per minute, a 200-mile journey on the choppy seas off the coast of Nova Scotia, and a series of zero-G flights in the notorious ``vomit comet'' aircraft.…”