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NASA and Johnson's Space Center
NASA’s Johnson Space Center, the mission control center for our nation’s space program, is located in the 22nd District and employs a workforce of over 17,000, including civil servants and contractors. For nearly four decades, the Johnson Space Center has been the crown jewel of NASA’s space program, attracting the best and the brightest to southeast Texas. The Center serves as mission control for all human space flight and provides astronaut training.
The Center and NASA’s accomplishments and programs greatly benefit the district and the nation. Every dollar invested in the space program is returned exponentially in the form of new products, technologies, and businesses. (In fact, relative to our entire federal budget, NASA’s dollar share comes to less than 1%.) NASA pushes the boundaries of the final frontier, creating commerce, assisting with education, increasing our economic competitiveness, enhancing healthcare, monitoring climate change, improving weather forecasting, building stronger bonds with our allies, and ensuring the survival of the human race.
In 2002, I introduced the Space Exploration Act, a bill to establish long term goals for NASA and our space program. This bill, in principle, was largely adopted by the Administration in 2004. And that’s just one example of what I want to do to help the space community.
The real obstacle is the lack of a commitment to get started. We don’t need another national commission to come up with goals for human space flight beyond low Earth orbit. What we do need is a national commitment to carrying out any one of the many worthy goals articulated to date.
I want the U.S. to get started. And I hope we can interest our international friends in working with us on this grand undertaking. Space exploration is humanity’s future – not just America’s.
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