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The one period of glory in NASA was the first nine years when they weren't a bureaucracy yet... and they haven't gotten back to that excitement, that adventurism, and won't. So, I would take most of the NASA budget, and I would turn it into prizes for private sector.

It takes a few years to prepare for a space mission.

Think on a 50-year scale, which is a much more natural time-scale for global warming. The US is right now spending about 200 million dollars annually on research into renewable energy.

We actually look to the scientific community to kind of come back to NASA and tell us what the priorities should be. And then at NASA, we try to look within our budget and say, 'What can we accommodate, and what are the most important things for the nation?'

Yet, if we accept the solution offered today by this bill to explore and develop for oil on the coastal plain of ANWR, it will be 5 years, at least, and probably closer to 8 before the first barrel of oil flows from that effort.

The problem is that many people operate on the assumption that NASA should go to Congress every year with hat in hand and justify it every year. Well, I see it as the greatest economic driver that there ever was. Economic drivers don't need justification.

How in heaven's name can a nation with a $1 trillion surplus threaten so much scientific research so vital to its future?

If leaders in the space program had at its beginning in the 1940s, pointed out the benefits to people on earth rather than emphasizing the search for proof of evolution in space, the program would have saved $100 billion in tax money and achieved greater results.

In 12 or 15 years, there will be routine, affordable space tourism not just in the U.S. but in a lot of countries.

One of the big things about space exploration is that it is as expensive as it is complicated, and you need all the countries of the world to help if you want to accomplish big goals.