just by way of giving a measure of this great american patriot, marine, astronaut and now nasa administrator, then u.s. representative, now florida senator bill nelson was aboard the 1986 shuttle flight. nelson is now the chairman of the senate subcommittee on space and he said, "i trusted charlie with my life and would do so again." miles o'brian, a former cnn space koscorrespondent wrote "bolden happens to be a great guy who just doesn't happen to have the right stuff, he knows his stuff." so it's my pleasure to introduce our next speaker, the honorable charles "charlie" "panther"

bolden. hoorah. >> thank you all very much. thank you very much. thank you so much. it's an honor for me to be here. drew, i can't thank you enough -- i'll join general petraeus in saying, introductions like that, my mother and father are also looking down on us today an i can tell you, they're gloating, especially my mother who does believe that and probably helped you write it. that's always great. i would like to recognize an old school mate, george bowman. a member of the organization. he's another south carolinian who has done incredibly well. i want to thank my host this morning and i want to acknowledge the presence of mrs. davis, margaret davis, because of all the special work that she does with the marine corps scholarship foundation and other programs that take care of our

military kids and families. so margaret, thanks so much for coming out. [ applause ] i do have to say it's an honor for me to share the podium this morning with such distinguished company as general petraeus and mr. o'hanlon and i feel somewhat out of place but hopefully by the time i finish making my remarks, you'll understand why i think it is appropriate that i be here. people don't think of national security when you hear the term "nasa." but hopefully in my brief remarks i'll have an opportunity to help you understand the critical role that we do play. when i embarked on my military career, and i hate to say it, but nearly 50 years ago. that sounds like a long time, but it's not. it really isn't. not in today's life. that is just a brief period of time. but as a young kid, a

snotty-nose kid fresh out of high school, c.a. johnson high school in columbia, south carolina, i had no idea where my path would lead me. in fact if i were to grade myself on achievement of goals established by myself for me when i graduated from high school, i tell kids all the time, i'd get an f because i have done nothing that i planned to do when i graduated from c.a. johnson high school other than go to the united states naval academy. that was something that i dedicated myself to from seventh grade on. i struggled to get there, but i finally got there. then as i left high school, as i left south carolina, i said, okay, there are two things i know and they were both negatives. i would not fly airplanes because that wassin pare inhere dangerous and under no circumstances, because the marine corps' purpose is to produce officers, and under no circumstances would i become a marine because every marine i knew was stupid. and that was what i thought at the time. so i was going to go through the

naval academy, serve my mandatory five years in the navy, probably sail on a ship or something. get out, go back to graduate school, earn a degree in electrical engineer and make money. never got there. so i would have to give myself an f in getting to the goals that i set for myself. i did go to the naval academy, though, because i wanted to follow in the footsteps of my father and my uncles, men who had served with distinction in world war ii when they had to fight for the right to defend this nation. i'm proud to say that my son also followed me into the marine corps. he's now a lieutenant colonel stationed here at the pentagon and is an f-18 back seater and spanish foreign area officer and doing all kinds of great things. my military career opened vistas that i never could have dreamed possible when i was a student in segregated south carolina, trying to live up to the high ideals of my parents to get a good education and pursue my

dreams. like me, many of our astronauts have come from the military. precisely for the skills and values that the military helps us develop. while we are civil space agency, nasa, dod and the national security apparatus share many of the same technologies. we share many of the same enabling systems, a common industrial base. we have similar facility needs and we have similar workforce needs. we have many differences too, but the key to cooperation is to work together to overcome challenges and focus on activities that benefit both organizations. and i will say if you go through the ranks of our nasa employees, many of them are your fellow reservists and many of them have had to leave the workforce for periods of time, up to a year, to go serve in iraq, afghanistan and other places around the country. and i'm always proud to talk about one of my favorite crew members twice, dr. kathy sullivan, u.s. naval reserve

retired, who was a naval oceanographer meteorologist, first american woman to walk in space on and on and on and on. so the reserve organization in our military is truly the pack bone of everything that we do. nasa has also utilized air force launch support. such as the mission that required the performance of the air force titan 4. our partnership with d.o.d. in the development and use of the current involved expendable launch vehicle or eelv fleet is helping to sustain the industrial base necessary to ensure that d.o.d. has access to space that it needs. at the same time we're encouraging and facilitating the development of domestic commercial launch providers. nasa and d.o.d. have a long-standing practice of sharing facility. as some of you know, a number of nasa centers are colocated with d.o.d. bases.

the relationships between langley research center and langley air force base, dryden flight research center and edwards air force base, the kennedy center are all very strong with nasa and d.o.d. organizations sharing facilities, operation support contracts and flight operations mission support. goddard space flight center just east of d.c., not very far from here, has a global network of satellite communications and downlink facilities. it shares resources with d.o.d. in far-reaching places like ascention island, antarctica an guam. it also operates a joint center for the development and validation of space weather. models and instruments in cooperation with the air force and others. we recognize that space weather information is vital to the military commanders an space scientists for planning an anomaly resolution. finally, the goal stone deep

space network has a downlink site at the national training center at ft. irwin, california. as most of you know we recently retired our flagship program, the space shuttle, after 30 spectacular years of flight and 135 missions. that's more flights by far than any other human space flight program. through its triumphs and tragedies, it gave our nation many firsts and many proud moments. the defense department flew 11 dedicated missions on the space shuttle. the first was sts-4 in june, 1982. and the last was sts-53 in december, 1992. nasa is also proud to have provided space access to about 270 secondary d.o.d. payloads, most on the shuttle middeck or in the cargo bay. the shuttle also launched communications satellites that helped make the whole world more secure and helped establish a deep space communications

network. satisfying the increased reliance on today's high bandwidth systems with space-based communications continues to be a d.o.d. priority and these same systems fulfill a critical need of communications role in the international space station program. future investment in communications is a priority for both d. omptle o.d. and nasa. the technological advances promised by optical and laser communications systems show great potential. nasa and d.o.d. are collaborating to field new capabilities as quickly as possible to meet the needs of both agencies. with respect to the shuttle, it was time for us to get out of the business of owning the infrastructure to reach low earth orbit. when industry was rapidly developing the capabilities to do just that. as we hand access to leo off to industry, nasa can now focus on the bigger picture horizon and

do those things no one else can do right now. we're turning to development of the transportation systems and spacecraft necessary for crew to explore beyond lower earth orbit, such as orion and the space launch system. we are also pursuing the development of technologies such adds in-space propulsion, space-based assembly, deep space habitats, closed loop life support and many others that will be critical to getting humans to an asteroid and mars, as president obama has challenged us to do. right now, it is true that we are dependent on the russians to get our crews to the international space station, but our industry partners are meeting milestones and making steady progress toward getting crews and cargo to space, so that we only have to rely on this foreign outsourcing for as short a period of time as possible. when the decision was made to retire the shuttle fwhback in 2,

we always knew there would be a gap in our space flight capability. in a few months, space x an orbital sciences will launch their capsules respectively to berth with the international space station. something that's being done on a commercial basis for the very first time. this follows the successful launch, orbit and intact recovery of a space x dragon capsule at the end of 2010. i have also seen sierra nevada's dream chaser vehicle in boulder, colorado. i have seen blue origin in washington. their launch abort system and the new shepherd vehicle that will fly experiments into suborbital space. i visited the new horizontal integration facility in virginia that will support medium class mission capabilities with orbital as its first customer as part of the mid-atlantic regional space port. boeing will be processing its low earth transport system in

what was formerly our orbiter processing facility at kennedy. i visited lockheed martin in denver and have seen firsthand their work on orion, our module for deep space exploration. so yes, it all feels very real to me. and more commercial companies developing viable options to lower earth orbit makes us more secure as a nation. even as we facilitate's industry's creation of this brand new job-creating sector of the economy, we're focusing on the capabilities of those big missions. american launch capability is going to be better than ever. we're upgrading our kennedy space center in florida and making it more flexible so that it can accommodate a wider range of users and we can win back some of the launch business we've lost overseas. kennedy is going to launch the space launch system, our new heavy lift rocket, to carry humans to deep space. at the space center in

mississippi, we're test firing components of the rocket now, repurposing shuttle engines to give us a leg up on testing and making the most of the workforce and infrastructure we already possess to bring this massive project to reality in the coming decade. we envision a rocket capable of multiple types of missions and varying sizes of pay loads so that other users besides nasa will benefit, and the cost will be far less for all. president obama has given us a mission with a capital m, to focus again on the big picture of exploration and the crucial research and development that will be required for us to move beyond lower earth orbit. he's charged us with carrying out the inspiring missions that only nasa can do, which will take us farther than we've ever been, ultimately a human mission to mars. ever sips we got our road map forward in the form of the nasa authorization act of 2010, we

have been moving toward the missions of tomorrow and the capabilities we'll need to visit new places, launch cutting edge science missions and help develop the next generation of aviation systems from which we'll all benefit. the president is asking us to harness that american spirit of innovation, the drive to solve problems and create capabilities is so embedded in our story and has led us to the moon, to great observatories and to humans living and working in space probably indefinitely. we strive to seed innovation, to facilitate the kind of environment where space robots like the nasa general motors developed humanoid robot called r-2 will provide new technologies for systems that create a human-like presence in space. r-2, believe it or not, is currently aboard the iss as its first robotic crew member, and it's doing normal tasks that

used to be done by astronauts. menial tasks like running the vacuum cleaner and doing other kinds of things. it's easy to forget that all the dollars we spend to get to space are spent right here on earth. that may seem obvious. but when you're talking about spacecraft hurtling millions of miles away into the solar system or even 400 miles above us like the hubble space telescope, we must remember that it's people, people who designed and operate them. people are currently orbiting on the iss 24/7 and they have done so for more than 11 years now. without interruption. and for those 11-plus years, there has always been, always been at least one american crew member on the iss crew. many of the technologies we develop to explore have big impact to quality of life across the globe. one of the most tangible ways we impact people's lives on a daily

basis is in aeronautics, the birs first a, the big a in nasa. nasa is exploring new ways to manage air traffic, build more fuel efficient and environmentally friendly airliners and ensure aviation's outstanding safety record. u.s. companies are well positioned to build on discoveries and knowledge resulting from nasa research, turning them into commercial products, improving the quality of life for everyone, providing new high-quality engineering and manufacturing job opportunities and enabling the united states to remain competitive in the global economy. we are interested in the aircraft of the future too. through our green flight challenge, for instance, we recently awarded a prize to a company for its electric plane demonstration. nasa has supported development of the next generation air

transportation system in partnership with d.o.d., homeland security and the federal aviation administration or faa through the joint planning and development office or jdpo. next gen will be much more scale al and flexible than today's system. this means improved and increased network communications among the various peoples and machines, aircraft and computers involved in the air transportation system. autonomy will also play a much greater role in next gen, especially the use of unmanned aircraft systems or uas. there's an increasing need to fly uas in the airspace system, to perform missions of vital importance to national security and defense, emergency management and science, and to enable commercial applications. nasa is working with the same partners, d.o.d., dhs and faa to

iron out operational issues for easier access today of uas to the airspace for public use missions. for the longer term, we are evaluating key technologies and concepts needed to integrate uas in civil airspace and generating data for regulators to support development of stringent uas air worthiness certification standards. we just completed development with other jpdo members of a national uas research, development and demonstration road map for uas access to our national airspace. this road map highlighted the joint partnership's ongoing activities and coordination and is helping to set the course for needed future investments across the community. the longer term research will further enable the d.o.d. and dhs to operation uas and national airspace for national security missions and enhance the technology available in the

marketplace. another significant way that nasa contributes to national security is through its partnership with defense department and other space agencies around the world to track orbital debris an monitor space weather, such as solar flares. tho knowing what's in space and going on is critical to d.o.d. as it migrates more high value capabilities to space. the ability to monitor systems and understand potential threats to these systems is a growing area of concern to the national security community. nasa's experience with both ground and space-based systems has the potential to assist d.o.d. in this growing mission area. nasa investments in improved sensors, higher spatial resolution, broader area coverage and finer spectral coverage are some of the activities that have potential benefits. our orbital debris program office in houston has been

working for 30 years to ensure that we're safe in space and on the ground. nasa is playing a leading role in this effort for the entire government. role in this effort for the entire government. the u.s. strategic command tracks about 22,000 major pieces of space debris and updates their status every eight hours in relation to the international space station. but nasa is aware of more than a million smaller pieces of debris. some of these articles only we can see with our telescopes and other monitoring equipment. and only we can characterize their environment and potential impacts. a collision several years ago shows that space is not as big as we once thought. the number of objects in space is growing and we need to improve our catalog and tracking ability. so far, we've been doing a good job with the enormous quantity of data.

it's not just ris tok the iss. we've had to do avoidance maneuvers with some earth observation satellites. and last year one of the satellites in orbit as well. given that these contribute to our health and well being in many ways from continuity of data to rapid information about natural disasters that most definitely qualifies as national security. when i first launched to space the cold war was in its waning years, but most of the first generation of the space program was defined by that paradigm. i'm proud to say that i congressmaned the first joint mission with a russian cosmonaut as a mission specialist crew member. that mission sts 16 stands among many milestones in space diplomacy witness stand was a precursor to perhaps the crowning achievement of international cooperation of all time. the construction and operation of the international space

station by 16 nations demonstrating the potential for space to unite us as a world. something more important today than ever. if everyone could see the world from space see how it is one planet without political borders, serene in its unity. perhaps there would be less conflict. while we're working on greater access to space, we're pursuing a path of big missions, and big projects that demand cooperation. akrauss our own agency and among nations. because any missions to mars or similar venture is going to take the expertise, the passion, and the resources of more than one nation. i'm the eternal optimist, but i'm a realist. we need to remain the leader in space exploration and the capabilities we're developing for those bigger missions the commercial access to space, all of this will only strengthen our

position as the world space exploration leader. any security without growth and jobs is tenuous. as president obama said in the state of the union address, we're going to have to create an america built to last. there's no doubt that nasa creates good jobs. helps inspire the next generation of science and technology leaders and gives students hands on access to missions, spacecraft and robotic design and many other experiences they can't get anywhere else. we've also placed the high priority on hiring veterans when they return from service. nasa is a natural fit for them. they've been flying vehicles. controlling uavs. managing and repairing satellites and analyzing data already. they know a lot about our nation's security needs and we'll need their skills to help us reach new heights in the decades to come.

we want them to translate what they've already done on the front lines of combat and military service to the front lines of creating a bright future for our nation's space program. the technological benefits from an expansive 21st century exploration program will be considerable. but that exploration program also has a human face. it's all of you here today as well as the brave men and women who have sacrificed their lives to expand human potential. it's those who currently dedicate their lives and their passions to keeping us safe and make life better through space. they're the new astronaut class we just graduated this past november who will be the first to climb aboard those commercial rockets and perhaps the first to set foot on mars. they're my granddaughters and the students to whom i spoke last week at morgan state university who are passionate,

passionate about science, technology, space, and aviation. they want to make a world a better place. it's up to us to pave the way for them and keep their dreams alive. i'm optimistic about their future. and i hope you share my passion and my enthusiasm. thanks so much for allowing me to be with you. i hopefully will have time to answer some of your questions. >> we do. >> thank you. [ applause ] >> we already have a few questions. if you have others would you please pass them to the aisle and the sergeant in arms will collect them.

first, i used to be a reporting. i wonder if you can comment on the possible 30 litsization of space. we had someone who said we could colonize the moon. what say you to that? >> i think it's quite interesting as a space buff i'm very glad to see any political candidates mention space in their campaign speeches because it puts this important area in front of the american public. now what our responsibility is is to talk about what is realistic, what's on the horizon and the like. and i think the road or the path that the president and congress and the 2010 authorization act have set us on is pretty much in keeping with what you have heard all the candidates talk about with some limitations. >> okay.

if you have other questions just bring them on up. there has been voiced some concern about the state of u.s. education. you touched on your training as an electrical engineer that somehow we're getting behind in science technology, engineering and math which could have implications on our national security and the space program. how would you respond to that? >> nasa shares that concern. in fact, although i always tell people, we are not -- repeat, not the department of education. but we have more content that is available than any other federal agency. we can put a student in front of a tv and let them talk to astronauts on the international space station orbiting earth 200,000 miles away any day of the week. we can bring out a space suit. there's so many things we can do to try to get kids inspired in math, science and technology.

that's what we do. we have a program called summer of innovation that we introduced two years ago. it's a pilot and will go into our third year this summer. it's focused on middle school students and their teachers. because nasa recognizes that we've got to start somewhere earlier than high school. high school is too late. we'd love to go to elementary school, but we just can't. we focused on middle school kids and their teachers. we want to have middle school teachers become familiar enough with science and math and more thanning that one they can tell their students that an engineer is not the first guy in a train. that engineering is a feel of endeavor that designs, builds, dreams and makes the future better for all of us. and that will not be afraid to stand in front of a group of students and talk about science, math and engineering. >> you mentioned in your remarks, the reliance of nasa and our space program, innovation and development in the private industrial sector.

and yet we are going through a prolonged recession that industry has been as much affected as the individual american citizen many the world. has that retarded our development of the innovations that are necessary to continue space exploration? >> i would say not. we've been slowed. if you look at our budget for this year for 2012 we were somewhat disappointed in the amount of money that we got for the commercial crew development program. we got a little bit less than half of what the president had asked for. and what he asked for was a little bit less than what he knew we really needed. so -- what my job right now is to try to acquaint all of you with what we hope to do with commercial crew capability to get us off depends on the russians and make no mistake about this. they are an incredible