I Was Sold On Flying As Soon

We're Going To Go To The Moon. We're Going To Go On To Mars. We're Going To Set Up A Base On The Moon. Ok, But No Money To Pay For It, Nothing In The Budget For It. And So The Decision Made At That Time Was To Cancel The Whole Shuttle Program To Save Money, Which I Think Was Very, Very Short Sighted.

I Still Love To Fly And I'll Never Get Over That.

We Thought That The Odds Of Things Working Ok Were Up In The Upper 90 Percent Or We Wouldn't Have Gone. But The - There Were Some Problems Cropped Up On The Flight But Was Able To Take Care Of Those Ok And - Although They Were Things That We Hadn't Really Trained That Much For. But It Was The Time Of The Cold War And So There Were Was A Lot Of Pressure On The - To Get Going And The Russians Were Claiming That They Were - Soviets Were Claiming They Were Ahead Of Us In Technology.

Exploration, Of Course, Is Going To New Places, But I Don't Think We Go To New Places Just Solely To Say: "well, We've Been There," And Come Back, Interesting Though It May Be. To Me, Each Time We Go Farther Into Space We Should Use That To Do Basic Research - Basic Research That Can't Be Done Before You Go There.

Because Now, You Know, It's Going To Be A Number Of Years Yet Before We Have Our Own New Boosters And New Spacecraft To Go To Our Own International Space Station And Proceed With All The Research That We Spent $100 Billion Putting Up There To Give Us That Research Capability For The Future For People Right Here On Earth.