America's space program has been the envy and inspiration of the world. It has made landmark scientific discoveries that are a lasting legacy of this nation's greatness. It has studied Earth in ways no other nation can match.
I was 8 when we landed on the moon. I was so into the space program as a kid. Eventually, I realized it was very unlikely that a Mexican kid in the early '70s was going to be an astronaut.
I've always loved airplanes and flight. The space program was really important to me as a kid. I still have a photo of Armstrong and Aldrin on the moon in my living room.
You see this swirl of ideas and interaction of different players. Those interactions are helping to increase the pace of commercial space activity. We are bringing the pace of Silicon Valley to the space program.
The Enterprise In Space program is an exciting opportunity to simultaneously advance cutting edge technologies while getting students from around the world engaged in STEAM and space education.
Our goal is to show that you can develop a robust, safe manned space program and do it at an extremely low cost.
I've led a life of such structured discipline and always had a goal in mind of knowing what I was doing, from West Point to the Air Force combat, MIT, looking for new things to study and get involved in. And then I got into the space program, and how disciplined can you get?
By refocusing our space program on Mars for America's future, we can restore the sense of wonder and adventure in space exploration that we knew in the summer of 1969. We won the moon race; now it's time for us to live and work on Mars, first on its moons and then on its surface.
My expertise is the space program and what it should be in the future based on my experience of looking at the transitions that we've made between pre-Sputnik days and getting to the moon.
By the time I finished high school, I knew I wanted to become an astronomer. By the time I finished college, I knew I wanted to be part of the American space program. And that's exactly what I did.
