Space Community Mourns Loss of DeLay’s Budget Influence

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. -- The unexpected resignation of U.S. Rep. Tom DeLay (R-Texas), NASA’s most powerful ally in Congress, sent shockwaves through the space community.

DeLay, who stepped down as House majority leader last fall after being indicted in Texas, announced April 3 that he would not seek reelection this November and would be leaving Congress some time this year.

DeLay is credited with almost single handedly securing NASA’s congressional budget victories of the past two years and had vowed during a March 30 appropriations hearing to fight to get NASA more funding for 2007 than the $16.792 billion requested by the White House.

".... I have always thought NASA was a waste."

I'll try to convince you otherwise..........

Astronauts bring back the visions of space, they bring back what its like to see our earth as an outsider. They bring back what its like to be a child of earth. To see our world as it truly is, an oasis in a vast black expanse.

They take human presence beyond our world. No machine can do this.

They teach us that the sky is not the limit, that there ARE no limits.

They keep an AMERICAN presense in space. If we dont. Someone else will certainly take the lead. China is seeking the high ground now.

There are reasons why this nation is where it is today.
Reasons why any of us are here at all. Brave people took the risks and went beyond the horizon. They did so on ships they knew may not return and on imperfect wings.

Astronaut Story Musgrave.....

"We have been a frontier culture. We were born out of exploration, we were born out of adventure. We were born out of the plains and the mountains. We've been a very physical kind of culture. And so, if you look at adventure, if you look at exploration, if you look at immersion in nature, a physical culture, and all those things, you can see directly how space flight relates to the way America has been born and how it evolved."

"You have to keep pushing the frontier not
just because it's there, but because that's how we find things that end up changing humanity," -Paul Hill, Mission Control

Why Space, Why Explore?

Astronaut Story Musgrave...........

We have no choice, Sir. It is the Nature of Humanity, it is the Nature of Life

The Globe was created and Life Evolved, and you look at every single cubic millimeter on this Earth, You can go 30,000 feet down below the Earth surface, You can go 40,000 feet up in the air and Life is There. When you look at the globe down there, you see Teeming Life Everywhere

It is the Power of Life, And maybe I am not just a Human up here, you know. Now Life is Leaping off the Planet. It is heading to other parts of the Solar System, other parts of the Universe

There are those kinds of Pressures. It isn't simply politics, it is not simply technology, it is really not just the essence of humanity, but it is sort of also, you could look at it as maybe the Essence of Life. I think Teilhard de Chardin, in Phenomenon of Man, I believe he put that incredibly well. So those kind of Forces are at Work. It is the nature of humans to be exploratory and to Push On

Yes, it costs resources and it does cost a lot, and there is a risk, there is a penalty, there is a down side, but Exploration and Pioneering, I think those are the critical things, it is the Essence of what Human Beings are, and that is to try to understand their Universe and to try to participate in the entire Universe and not just their little Neighborhood -Story Musgrave

One of my most convincing arguments for space exploration is the
analogy that Earth itself is a spacecraft. Everything we learn about
how to function and live in space applies directly to our spacehip
Earth. How to recycle air, water, how to generate and use power
efficiently, how to grow food in closed ecosystems. All of it is
important. All of this can benefit mankind in a world with a fast
growing population. Understanding other worlds is
how we understand OUR world better, to understand
how it formed and where it is going. Its our only home for now.

"We must not cease from exploration, and at the end of all our
exploring will be to arrive where we began, and to know it for the
first time."
T.S. Eliot

President Bush at the Columbia memorial at JSC................

"The cause of exploration and discovery is not an option we choose, It is a desire written in the human heart."

And at the announcement of new American space policy...........

"Mankind is drawn to the heavens for the same reason we were once drawn into unknown lands and across the open sea. We choose to explore space because doing so improves our lives, and lifts our national spirit."

Gallup survey.....

"More than three-fourths (77%) of the American public say they support a newplan for space exploration that would include a stepping-stone approach to returnthe space shuttle to flight, complete assembly of the space station, build areplacement for the shuttle, go back to the Moon and then on to Mars and beyond"

Excerpted from Silver Linings : Triumph of the Challenger 7. by June Scobee

A note in a Challenger astronauts briefcase found after the loss.....

"We have whole planets to explore, we have new worlds to build. We have a solar system to roam in. And if only a tiny fraction of the human race reaches out toward space, the work they do there will totally change the lives of all the billions of humans who remain on earth, just as the strivings of a handful of colonists in the new world totally changed the lives of everyone in Europe, Asia & Africa."

Had Dick left the note in his briefcase for us to find if something happened? Did he write it on scratch paper to use to quote in a speech? All we'll ever know is that when we most needed a message, it was there. He left for us his dream for the world, his vision for space exploration.

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