President Donald Trump wants us to go to Mars! And with that, he’s wanting NASA to bring back their space flight program, hoping to send “something very beautiful to Mars in the very near future.”
“Before me are some rocket ships. You haven’t seen that from this country in a long time,” Trump stated. “Many the jobs we’re doing, Mike Pence is the chairman, many of these jobs we are doing are privately financed. We’re letting them use the Kennedy Space Center for a fee. Rich guys, they love rocket ships. And that’s good. That’s better than us paying for it.”
“And I notice the prices of the last one, they said it cost $80 million. If the government did it, the same thing would’ve cost probably 40, 50 times that amount of money.”
“At the same time, NASA is very much involved in doing their own projects,” he continued. “We’re bringing that whole space flight back. We’ll be sending something very beautiful to Mars in the very near future. We’re going to areas that nobody thought possible, certainly not this quickly, so we’re very proud.”
From Space.com in 2011:
To mark the end of the program and to say thank you to its thousands of workers, many of whom are losing their jobs with the shuttle’s retirement, NASA hosted employee gatherings at the centers that supported and oversaw the flyout of the shuttle.
After similar celebrations at Kennedy Space Center in Florida and Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama, the last of these events took place Saturday (Aug. 27) at the “home” of the shuttle program, Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas.
“We’re here to celebrate an incredible 30 year run,” NASA Administrator and former shuttle astronaut Charles Bolden said, addressing the thousands of JSC workers and their families who came out for the “Salute Our Space Shuttle: Foundation for Our Future” celebration. “All of you need to leave here tonight with your chest stuck out as proud as you can be because we have done something that no one else was ever able to do and no one will ever do again.”