Nasa administrator bill nelson joined former texas republican senator Kay Bailey Hutchison for a conversation at the lbj president ial library in austin, texas. They discuss space exploration, research and development and foreign policy. Now onto tonights program. In 1967, president Lyndon Johnson said when we ask what expects to find from exploration in space, the answer is one word knowledge. Knowledge we need to maintain earth as a habitable environment for man. If that was trunasa, which lyndn helped to catalyze when he was e boundaries of space and increase our knowledge of the universe. Tonight we will get a view of our space efforts from the very top of nasa. Senator bill nelson has served as the 14th administrator of nasa 2021. Prior to his appointment he represented florida for 18 years in the senate and 12 years in the house of representatives. During his time in the senate, senator nelson had an impact on nearly all space, including lank nasa reauthorization act of 2010, which he our moderator this evening, senator kay bailey hutchinson. Senator nelson has also been in space himself, flying with the crew of the Space Shuttle columbia in 1986, which orbited the earth nearly 100 times in six days. Senator hutchison, a moderator, is a graduate from the university of texas. Elected to the senate in 1993 and remained until 2013. Vice chair of the republican as conference and chair of the republican policy committee. From 2017 through 2021, she served as u. S. Permanent resident in nato in brussels. Before brings outq senator hutchinson, senator nelson would like to offer some words please join me in welcoming senator bill nelson. [applause] mr. Nelson kay and i are going to have a discussion but we wanted to give you a glimpse throughqm video of not only what has happened and some very important times in the history we will recount tonight, particularly president johnsons influence senator, Vice President and president on shaping the space programha influence is still felt today. On the first video, it will be my voiceover into these are very short. This is a less than two minute video. I want to give you the setting. The setting is the 60th anniversary to the day of president kennedy n■ university with Lyndon Johnson sitting behind him. After the sovietus with sputnikn surprid again with the first human to orbit the earth before we could even get alan orbit, kennedy made a bold decision. W, johnson h ground. As majority leader, he had really shaped the future by passing in 1958 the nasa bill that set up nasa. Course johnson was quite concerned with what the soviets were doing and he was all over that. Bu kennedy to make that clarion call that we are going to the moon and return safely before the end of the decade. He did that after alan shepard hadwe were way behind. The soviets have the high ground and kennedy made this decision before we ever put john glenn into orbit. This was in the spring of 1961 after yuri guard darren had flown. I will tell you a secret that is no longer secret, but it was a secret because the soviets kept successful spaceflight was to orbit and then to land. But the soviets were afraid we would beat them. They went ahead and launched a herculean effort. He went into orbit but he did not land, he bailed out. They kept that a secret. A few months later, they put another man into ort y still ct land. It was later on that they got the ability to have retro rockets as the spacecraft was coming parachute and the retro rockets would ignite and soften the landing. Ey still used to this day. Kennedy makes the bold declaration, weve only gone into low ortho over it orbit, touching it without going into orbit with alan shepard. He makes this decision, he goes into a joint session of congress and he makes e declaration. And it gets some attention but it doesnt really resonate. It doesnt reil the following spring, 1962, when john glenn shimmies into that little spacecraft on top of the atlas rocket knowing there was a 20 chance the rocket was going to blow up. Of course the rest is history. America went nuts. So kennedy makes the decision to again issue this clarion call. He goes to Rice University stadium in september of 1962 and he makes this bold declaration. We go to the moon and do other things not because it is easy h. That became a mantra of the space program. As we will discuss tonight, we will talk about how it was johnson that not only as senator that started all of this but then as Vice President , i will tell you some of the sneaky things he did. The activity away from cape canaveral, as the turned around and half of it was taken by linden lyndon[laugh] and then of course as president , he pushed it and before he left office he was able to see us orbit the moon. Not land. On apollo eight, christmas 1968, just before he retired as president. I want you to have a flavor of that beginning and then i want you to see a two minute■ clip on where we are going in 2024. [video clip] throughout americas story there are defining days. Days when mines change, hartsville and imaginations sore. [applause] he trajectory of the american story, which is our story. Doing what is hard and achieving what is great. That is what stirs humankind. With inspiration and innovation, no herculean effort is too large, no moonshot is beyond our re and liftoff of artemis i. Mr. Nelson a new generation, the artemis generation stands ready to return humanity to the moon and to take us closer than ever before to mars. eunfold this universe and lets continue to find unity in our discovery. Together, let us continue to dream the impossible dream that now becomes real. Lets traverse the untouched terrain of the once unreachable stars. [applause] it is a new day in space exploration. As wesee, there is so much to l. There is so much to be excited about. American companies will soon land payloads on the moon for the first time. These missions are really challenging and risky. You will help us conduct new science. Artemis is different from anything humanity has embarked on before. We will discovercience and technology along the way. Science can be achieved by humans working together with robotic capabilities, and future infrastructure to secure a longterm presence on the moon. [uplifting music] to perform science. We will have two companies, it will change the way we look at how we fly into space. The more we learn about the earth and understand what affects it, the better we can defend the future. Mr. Nelson the needle nose wile aviation industry. We will show what is possible when we dare to reach distant cosmic shores. This is absolutely breathtaking. [music intensifies] [applause] latest engineman, please welcome senators bill nelson and kay bailey hutchinson. [applause] welcome. I want to add a couple of thingm so happy all of you are here, to just do the amendment to what bill said about the kennedy speech at Rice University, because what he said in full was why do we want to send men into space . Why play texas . [laughter] not because it is easy, because it is hard. [laughter] thats the quote that we all know. [laughter] i want to say before we start that bill and i are soul brothers. En he was the senator from florida and i was the senator from texas, we bonded over nasa. Were a lot of people that said it is time for us to stop the shuttles, and end the shuttles, we should go full private end nasa. Thats where we were. Bill and i felt it wasmportant to have the private sector for the investment and creativity, but we knew the bases had to be nasa. It had to be the people who had built the first space stations and the background to work with the private sector and that would be the best results. The result was the nact that bid and passed. I think that nowt bill was appointed administrator and that was a Perfect Choice me whs and you said the president just called me himself and said you have to do this. End of course it probably your dream, i would say. Mr. Nelson i turned him down. [laughter] ms. Tchison how did we end up where we are . Mr. Nelson because i started talking about it grace, my wife and came to the obvious conclusion, who can say no to the president under the circumstances . So here we are. Ms. Hutchison you had bought out role in this. In the history i have read about the lbj role, it was really after, of course sputnik landed. Lbj said now this is really big, we cant let russia have a technology edge. His quote controls the world is who controls space. He said that. While he was in the background, because of course president kennedy was the president , he so wrote a memo to the president that is in the archives that says he was the chairman of the and he had all e studies done and he wrote a memo to president kennedy saying we can do thiby the end of this decade. That was when kennedy said ok, im going to make the speech and we are going to do it. Mr. Nelsoe enthusiast was johnson. Kennedy realized the strategic goal of we could not let the soviets master the high ground. He looked at it as a space race by the way, weve got another space race today. China. We should be landing on the moon before them,■ . Very Aggressive Program in their budget. They got a lot of room to grow and of course we are dealing with budgets and a very tumultuous time that congress cannot even pass an appropriations bill for the existing fiscal year. But kennedy understood that america needed a higher calling, a purpose. That is when he came upon it. Nteresting. As johnson was, what you said, the chairman of the National Space council. An arm of the white house. But he was not a johnnycomelately done all of these things back in the 1950s when he was the majority leader, the master of the senate. Appointed himself chairman of the newly created committee on space. The result of that was the nasa bill that set up nasa. As he became president , he implemented interestingly, he always give kennedy credit for having had that vision of goi to the moon by the end of the decade and return safely. Ms. Hutchison interestingly, also in the history, that was correct and it was a neutral decision that as we were building then on what kennedy and johnson started, we needed to have a separate where the astronauts would be trained, where they would build the whole to go into space. For all of the different factors, the houston area was chosen, clearly. And johnson died before that got started. It was roy benson who introduced the bill, to name it Johnson Space center. Mr. Nelson itctually dedicated while he was still alive but he was called the manned space flight center. And you are telling me what i didnt know, benson changed the name. Ms. Hutchison and johnson was already dead. He knew everything johnson had done in the senate because theyve been serving together all those years. Im sod we can talk about that here because that history wasnt really known. I want to talk about one other thing in history that you and i did. That was when we were working on the and we were at the end but e was what was called an alternate in case we lost one that was still available. And a doctor came to us and the committee and said i have to have the alpha magnetic he was a Nobel Prize Winner in physics. At m. I. T. He said this is the genesis of the study of dark matter that i want to make. We have to have shuttle to takea magnetic spectrometer, which was a hugebg the dark matter pings out of the space station. Bill and i you can tell this story as well said we will do this and we jointly went to nasa and said we have to have the extra shuttle. There was a lot of hesitance. ■no one really thought the shuttle would still be safe, they were aging all that. U were the one that talked them into that. Mr. Nelson i want to brag on kay a low bit. No, you did this. [laughter] mr. Nelson you today, they cat along . The two of us get along. [applause] kay would be chairman and then i would be chairman depending on whose party was in the majority. First that landmark bill shed mentioned in sent nasa in the direction its on now. Coming into the first year of the obama administration, it was chaos. They were way over budget and way behind on time going back to the moon on a program called ares. It was canceled outright by the obama administration. What we did is try to create a dual track for the future of nasa. The government track, which would still be and i today, the space launch system, the monster rocket you saw on the scene that was artemis i on its test flight, no crew, testing out all of the systems and hardware. That crew, we Just Announced yesterday there will be another delay. There named. The crew looks like america. Its also a canadian f18 pilot. We go back to the moon now after a halfcentury. We are going back in a different way and to a different place. We are not going to the equator of the moon, were going to the south pole, where we think there is water. Unfortunately also two days ago, a new rocket that is critical that we have in our stable of rockets, a brandnew rocket called the vulcan it was perfect but spacecraft, the lander had a valve problem and it is lost. ■abut within another couple of weeks, another commercial lander with a Spacex Falcon heavy, and if it ldssful, it is the precursor to a number of these commercial lenders that willct as commercial landers that will act as scouts for us when we send humans to the south pole. Why gthe south pole . We think there is water there, we know there is ice in the creves of if there is water, ts hydrogen and oxygen and we have rocket fuel. We could have a gasmind you, lah pole is not like landing on the equator where you have constant li pole if this is the moon and this is the bottom of the moon, the south pole in the nl angle, there are permanently shadowed areas. There is this pockmark with a lot of craters and you have to be very precise when landing. A couple of weeks we will have this next one from a houston company, a private, commercial company. It will launch and we will see if it can successfully land. That will be one of many more to come. Im saying all this about commercial because as we go back to the moon, we dont go just as the u. S. Government, nasa. We go with our commercial partners as well. The other big difference, we go back to the moon after a halfcentury with our international partners. Boy, are they beating on us, they want to be on that flight. We are doing a little horse trading with them get them to. Then we will give you a Flight Opportunity for an astronaut. Ms. Hutchison i want to Talk International but first i want to ask the basic question why are we going back to the moon . What is the big picture . Mr. Nelson because we dont know enough now to go all the way to mars. We cant do it and have the safety we want. The moon is three or four days away. Is 7, 8, 9 months away depending on where the planets are. We are going back to the moon to prepare to live, work in that hostile environment in order to be able to get to mars. Thats why we are going back to the moon. Ms. Hutchison what can you learn from the development of living on the moon that you think will apply to mars . How much do we know that is capable on mars moon is helpful . Mr. Nelson a number of things. Just a couple, i will give you an example. We are going to learn how to build things on the moon. We will apply se magic formula to moon dust and make pad so you dont stir up all of that dust when you are landing. We will build structures on the moon. We will learn how to protect our astronauts from a solar explosion, with all of that radiation through space. As long as we are in low earth orbit, we are generally within the magnetic sphere of the earth , which protects us from the radiation of a solar flare. Get outside of earth and you dont have that protection and weve got to learn how to do that if we are going toend astronauts all the way to mars and beyond the other do, we cay do a mission to mars and guarantee we will have astronau cg back now. You cant send astronauts for eight months, get the, cant stay on the surface for a short time. The planets have been realigned. Youve got to stay on the surface a year or two to bring them back with thashso weve gow propulsion that will get us to mars faster and we are working on that on nuclear thermal and nuclear electric propulsion. Ms. Hutchison one thing, again, is one of the members of our nasa Advisory Council, which bill hascmointed, is an expert in Hydrogen Propulsion and he is the ernest cockrel in the department of engineering at the university of texas. Dr. Jp clark. Remember that name, he is a real star at ut. Chaiof one of the committees on the Advisory Council on getting there faster, exactly as youve said. Thats a priority. Mr. Nelson i want to brag on you some more. [laughter] ms. Hutchison by the way, i invited dr. Clark to come tonight but he is out of town. He was sorry to miss you. Mr. Nelson on the interNational Space station, this is a fully person deplatform, usually there are at least seven astronauts. They are international knots. There are russian astronauts that are on the interNational Space station because theres a whole segment of the space station that is russian and the russianslt the space station with us. There are various u. S. Components and one of the u. S. Is a national laboratory. She is the one. K did it. Kay did it. [laughter] ■zo its a fe, albuquerque, out in california, new york. These national treasures. Theyre doing the research. They are finally getting to the point of having some breakthroughs and particularly protein crystal growth, which by the way was my very crude experiment early eight years ago on the Space Shuttle and its finally getting to the point where it is paying off, particularly in Cancer Research and Stem Cell Research kay is the one that insisted on the nasa that it was going to be a designated national lab. Thats where most of the science is being conducted on the interNational Space station. Ms. Hutchison it was really exciting because the Cancer Research is very■l different in space from here and you can only see certain growth of cancer ces in space that you cant see in our gravity. Really, with our md anderson and the private companies that wanted to have this abilitygo ta going of having a national lab so that the companies could participate, again, with fundi