Mark Gordon: “As usual, my friend from Massachusetts raises good points, and, as usual, he is a good watch dog for our Congress. I…”

“As usual, my friend from Massachusetts raises good points, and, as usual, he is a good watch dog for our Congress. I agree with him; we have to have priorities. But I think he has picked the wrong priority on this occasion. NASA, as has been said, under the right occasions is underfunded. It is not overfunded. It is an investment in our country. Then so you have to think, okay, within the NASA budget, where do we spend our money? Let me agree with my friend from Massachusetts that I think that we do need to slow down some of the manned Mars missions and fund other programs. I would like to see more funds then. But if we are not going to have adequate funding, we need to slow it down. But it would be irresponsible to do away with some of the planning in other sorts of areas. His amendment, I think there are really two main problems: one, that you don't just all of a sudden get in a space capsule and go to Mars. There is a lot of planning that goes before that. Additionally, there is overlap with a lot of the other missions. Even though I know the gentleman is trying to be clear in what he is doing, it simply doesn't come out that way. It would be a major problem for this country, a major problem for NASA. I will certainly work with him to try to, again, help better prioritize the planning of a Moon- Mars mission.”