↩ the History · a speech, filed

A Renewed Vision for Space

George W. Bush · NASA headquarters · January 14, 2004
text: The American Presidency Project, UC Santa Barbara · a work of the United States government, in the public domain
colour carries the act's function; a dashed underline marks a predicted misfire; hover or focus any span for its filing

Thanks for the warm welcome. I'm honored to be with the men and women of NASA. I thank those of you who have come in person. I welcome those who are listening by video. This agency and the dedicated professionals who serve it have always reflected the finest values of our country, daring, discipline, ingenuity, and unity in the pursuit of great goals.

America is proud of our space program. The risktakers and visionaries of this agency have expanded human knowledge, have revolutionized our understanding of the universe, and produced technological advances that have benefited all of humanity.

Inspired by all that has come before and guided by clear objectives, today we set a new course for America's space program. We will give NASA a new focus and vision for future exploration. We will build new ships to carry man forward into the universe, to gain a new foothold on the moon, and to prepare for new journeys to worlds beyond our own.

I am comfortable in delegating these new goals to NASA, under the leadership of Sean O'Keefe. He's doing an excellent job. I appreciate Commander Mike Foale's introduction. I'm sorry I couldn't shake his hand. [Laughter] Perhaps, Commissioner, you'll bring him by—Administrator, you'll bring him by to the Oval Office when he returns, so I can thank him in person.

I also know he is in space with his colleague, Alexander Kaleri, who happens to be a Russian cosmonaut. I appreciate the joint efforts of the Russians with our country to explore. I want to thank the astronauts who are with us, the courageous spacial entrepreneurs who set such a wonderful example for the young of our country.

And we've got some veterans with us today. I appreciate the astronauts of yesterday who are with us as well, who inspired the astronauts of today to serve our country.

I appreciate so very much the Members of Congress being here. Tom DeLay is here, leading a House delegation. Senator Nelson is here from the Senate. I am honored that you all have come. I appreciate you're interested in the subject. [Laughter] It is a subject that's important to this administration. It's a subject that's mighty important to the country and to the world.

Two centuries ago, Meriwether Lewis and William Clark left St. Louis to explore the new lands acquired in the Louisiana Purchase. They made that journey in the spirit of discovery, to learn the potential of vast new territory and to chart a way for others to follow. America has ventured forth into space for the same reasons. We have undertaken space travel because the desire to explore and understand is part of our character.

And that quest has brought tangible benefits that improve our lives in countless ways. The exploration of space has led to advances in weather forecasting, in communications, in computing, search and rescue technology, robotics, and electronics. Our investment in space exploration helped to create our satellite telecommunications network and the Global Positioning System. Medical technologies that help prolong life, such as the imaging processing used in CAT scanners and MRI machines, trace their origins to technology engineered for the use in space.

Our current programs and vehicles for exploring space have brought us far, and they have served us well. The space shuttle has flown more than a hundred missions. It has been used to conduct important research and to increase the sum of human knowledge. Shuttle crews and the scientists and engineers who support them have helped build the International Space Station.

Telescopes, including those in space, have revealed more than 100 planets in the last decade alone. Probes have shown us stunning images of the rings of Saturn and the outer planets of our solar system. Robotic explorers have found evidence of water, a key ingredient for life, on Mars and on the moons of Jupiter. At this very hour, the Mars Exploration Rover Spirit is searching for evidence of life beyond the Earth.

Yet for all these successes, much remains for us to explore and to learn. In the past 30 years, no human being has set foot on another world or ventured farther upward into space than 386 miles, roughly the distance from Washington, DC, to Boston, Massachusetts. America has not developed a new vehicle to advance human exploration in space in nearly a quarter-century. It is time for America to take the next steps.

Today I announce a new plan to explore space and extend a human presence across our solar system. We will begin the effort quickly, using existing programs and personnel. We'll make steady progress, one mission, one voyage, one landing at a time.

Our first goal is to complete the International Space Station by 2010. We will finish what we have started. We will meet our obligations to our 15 international partners on this project. We will focus our future research aboard the station on the long-term effects of space travel on human biology. The environment of space is hostile to human beings. Radiation and weightlessness pose dangers to human health, and we have much to learn about their long-term effects before human crews can venture through the vast voids of space for months at a time. Research onboard the station and here on Earth will help us better understand and overcome the obstacles that limit exploration. Through these efforts, we will develop the skills and techniques necessary to sustain further space exploration.

To meet this goal, we will return the space shuttle to flight as soon as possible, consistent with safety concerns and the recommendations of the Columbia Accident Investigation Board. The shuttle's chief purpose over the next several years will be to help finish assembly of the International Space Station. In 2010, the space shuttle, after nearly 30 years of duty, will be retired from service.

Our second goal is to develop and test a new spacecraft, the crew exploration vehicle, by 2008 and to conduct the first manned mission no later than 2014. The crew exploration vehicle will be capable of ferrying astronauts and scientists to the space station after the shuttle is retired. But the main purpose of this spacecraft will be to carry astronauts beyond our orbit to other worlds. This will be the first spacecraft of its kind since the Apollo Command Module.

Our third goal is to return to the moon by 2020, as the launching point for missions beyond. Beginning no later than 2008, we will send a series of robotic missions to the lunar surface to research and prepare for future human exploration. Using the crew exploration vehicle, we will undertake extended human missions to the moon as early as 2015, with the goal of living and working there for increasingly extended periods of time. Eugene Cernan, who is with us today, the last man to set foot on the lunar surface, said this as he left, "We leave as we came, and God willing as we shall return, with peace and hope for all mankind." America will make those words come true.

Returning to the moon is an important step for our space program. Establishing an extended human presence on the moon could vastly reduce the costs of further space exploration, making possible ever more ambitious missions. Lifting heavy spacecraft and fuel out of the Earth's gravity is expensive. Spacecraft assembled and provisioned on the moon could escape its far lower gravity using far less energy and thus far less cost. Also, the moon is home to abundant resources. Its soil contains raw materials that might be harvested and processed into rocket fuel or breathable air. We can use our time on the moon to develop and test new approaches and technologies and systems that will allow us to function in other, more challenging environments. The moon is a logical step toward further progress and achievement.

With the experience and knowledge gained on the moon, we will then be ready to take the next steps of space exploration, human missions to Mars and to worlds beyond. Robotic missions will serve as trailblazers, the advanced guard to the unknown. Probes, landers, and other vehicles of this kind continue to prove their worth, sending spectacular images and vast amounts of data back to Earth. Yet the human thirst for knowledge ultimately cannot be satisfied by even the most vivid pictures or the most detailed measurements. We need to see and examine and touch for ourselves. And only human beings are capable of adapting to the inevitable uncertainties posed by space travel.

As our knowledge improves, we'll develop new power generation propulsion, life support, and other systems that can support more distant travels. We do not know where this journey will end, yet we know this: Human beings are headed into the cosmos.

And along this journey, we'll make many technological breakthroughs. We don't know yet what those breakthroughs will be, but we can be certain they'll come and that our efforts will be repaid many times over. We may discover resources on the moon or Mars that will boggle the imagination, that will test our limits to dream. And the fascination generated by further exploration will inspire our young people to study math and science and engineering and create a new generation of innovators and pioneers.

This will be a great and unifying mission for NASA, and we know that you'll achieve it. I have directed Administrator O'Keefe to review all of NASA's current spaceflight and exploration activities and direct them toward the goals I have outlined. I will also form a commission of private and public sector experts to advise on implementing the vision that I've outlined today. This commission will report to me within 4 months of its first meeting. I'm today naming former Secretary of the Air Force Pete Aldridge to be the chair of the commission. Thank you for being here today, Pete. He has tremendous experience in the Department of Defense and the aerospace industry. He is going to begin this important work right away.

We'll invite other nations to share the challenges and opportunities of this new era of discovery. The vision I outline today is a journey, not a race, and I call on other nations to join us on this journey in a spirit of cooperation and friendship.

Achieving these goals requires a long-term commitment. NASA's current 5-year budget is $86 billion. Most of the funding we need for the new endeavors will come from reallocating $11 billion within that budget. We need some new resources, however. I will call upon Congress to increase NASA's budget by roughly a billion dollars, spread out over the next 5 years. This increase, along with refocusing of our space agency, is a solid beginning to meet the challenges and the goals that we set today. It's only a beginning. Future funding decisions will be guided by the progress we make in achieving these goals.

We begin this venture knowing that space travel brings great risks. The loss of the Space Shuttle Columbia was less than one year ago. Since the beginning of our space program, America has lost 23 astronauts and one astronaut from an allied nation, men and women who believed in their mission and accepted the dangers. As one family member said, "The legacy of Columbia must carry on—for the benefit of our children and yours." Columbia's crew did not turn away from the challenge, and neither will we.

Mankind is drawn to the heavens for the same reason we were once drawn into unknown lands and across the open sea. We choose to explore space because doing so improves our lives and lifts our national spirit. So let us continue the journey.

May God bless.

The divergences

"Today I announce a new plan to explore space and extend a human presence across our solar system" — the agency in the room files a Declaration, and files it correctly: from this sentence forward the institution chartered in 1958 for aeronautics and space science has extending human presence as its purpose, and every program inside it is now measured against that. The committee that writes the appropriation files an Assertion about an intention, since the sentence obligates no one, spends nothing, and can be reversed by a successor's paragraph of the same length. They part on function. The speech supplies its own control eight paragraphs later: "I'm today naming former Secretary of the Air Force Pete Aldridge to be the chair of the commission" is a declaration whose effect is complete when the sentence ends, and it is the only one on the page of which that is true.

"America has ventured forth into space for the same reasons" — an audience hearing history files an Assertion about motive, checkable against what explorers wanted; an audience about to be asked for money files a Frame-set, after which the program's cost is a question about the national character rather than about the budget. They part on target. The analogy is chosen with care and it does not survive inspection: Lewis and Clark went out under a specific appropriation, on a river, and were back in twenty-eight months. The sentence that follows completes the move — "the desire to explore and understand is part of our character" — and relocates the warrant to a place no vote can reach.

"Our third goal is to return to the moon by 2020, as the launching point for missions beyond" — NASA files a Promise and begins designing to it; a reader of the calendar files an Assertion of direction, since the speaker's authority ends in January 2009 and the date lies three terms past that. They part on orientation: keyed to the world, or to the standing of the man announcing it. The speech's own arrangement decides the question. The goals that carry a vehicle and a year cluster at 2008; the goals that carry only a heading run to 2020; and Mars, the destination the day is remembered for, carries no year at all. Compare the archive's genome page, where the same split appears at a different scale — a dated, technical commitment to a final draft in under three years, beside cures with no date and no agent. Constellation, the program built to this speech, was cancelled in February 2010 by the next President, before the shuttle it was to replace had flown its last mission.

"Most of the funding we need for the new endeavors will come from reallocating $11 billion within that budget" — NASA's comptroller files an Assertion about accounting, and every figure in it is exact; the directorates inside the $86 billion file a Threat, because $11 billion moved is $11 billion taken and the sentence names nothing that loses it. They part on function — a description, or a conditional harm addressed to whoever recognises themselves in "reallocating." The speech identifies exactly one program for termination, the shuttle, and identifies it as a retirement after nearly thirty years of duty. The new money, "roughly a billion dollars, spread out over the next 5 years," is about one percent of the budget named two sentences earlier, which is why the two filings could both be defended on the same afternoon.

"And only human beings are capable of adapting to the inevitable uncertainties posed by space travel" — the crewed-flight directorate files an Assertion about what machines cannot do; the science directorate files a Frame-set, because the sentence settles which half of the agency the reallocation comes out of and offers no evidence for doing so. They part on target. The evidence is in the speech's own ledger: the telescopes that found a hundred planets, the probes that photographed Saturn, the explorers that found water on Mars and the moons of Jupiter, and Spirit searching "at this very hour" are all uncrewed, and three sentences before this one they are reassigned as "trailblazers, the advanced guard." A discovery record built by robots is converted into the case for carrying people, and the conversion happens in a single unsupported clause.

"Future funding decisions will be guided by the progress we make in achieving these goals" — read narrow, an ordinary statement of budget practice that any agency head expects; read wide, the sentence that makes 2010, 2014, 2015 and 2020 conditional on reviews conducted by people not yet in office. They part on scope, and the speech marks where the reading has to be chosen by conceding, four words earlier, "It's only a beginning." Every dated commitment on the page was made before this sentence and is governed by it.

"Columbia's crew did not turn away from the challenge, and neither will we" — the families file a Promise that the deaths bought something; a program manager files an Assertion of resolve, since the act committed to is negative and no schedule can test whether it was performed. They part on function. The paragraph is built to make the first filing the natural one: twenty-four dead are counted, none is named, their consent is supplied by a participle, and the only quoted words in it come from an unnamed family member and take the form of a command, "must carry on." Set it beside the archive's Challenger page, where the same office addressed the same agency with nothing to announce; here the grief arrives in the paragraph before the peroration, after the money, and the vehicle whose loss is being mourned has already been given its retirement date.