NASA Nominees

Floor Speech

Mr. NELSON of Florida. Madam President, later on this week, I will talk about the plans we have in the Space and Science Subcommittee of the Senate Commerce Committee to do the hearings on the President's nominee for the NASA Administrator and Deputy Administrator, and I will announce that timetable later, after conferring with Senator Rockefeller, the chairman of the Commerce Committee.

I have a lot to say about the President's nominee, who I think is going to be one of the outstanding Administrators of NASA.

GEN Charlie Bolden will take over at a critical time in NASA's history because NASA is in drift. It is right at the ending of the life of the space shuttle as we finish the next eight missions to further complete the construction of the space station and equip it to be the national laboratory it is designed to be and then to ramp up in the development and testing of the new rocket, a program called Constellation, the rocket Aries, the capsule, hearkening back to some of the similar designs of the old capsule in the Apollo days, this one being called Orion, carrying a crew of up to seven, or should I say a crew of six. All that is now under review by a specially appointed Presidential commission, headed by a very esteemed aerospace expert, former Lockheed Martin CEO, now retired, Norm Augustine.

I will have more to say about this later, but let me congratulate President Obama on such an exceptional appointment. It is needed because our space program is certainly a part of the American character. GEN Charlie Bolden is the right person at the right time to lead this little agency out of the wilderness to the promised land, and that promised land is a robust space program, both human and unmanned, as we explore. That is what we are, we are explorers by nature.

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