And I want to thank each of the three distinguished witnesses who are here. This is a wonderful way to begin the new Congress and the jurisdiction of this subcommittee by focusing on the overarching goals that NASA should be focusing on our objectives. And I cannot think of a more distinguished, a more experienced, a more respected panel than three witnesses who are with us today. We have first Colonel Walt Cunningham, former NASA astronaut, and Apollo 7 pilot. We have next Dr. Buzz Aldrin, a former NASA astronaut, Apollo 11 pilot. And we have Mr. Michael Masimino, a former NASA astronaut, and mission specialist for the Space Shuttle program. And I thank each of the three of you from taking time from your busy schedules to join us. We will begin with Colonel Cunningham's testimony. Thank you, sir. I appreciate the opportunity to share my thoughts on where I believe our space program has been slipping and some of the things I believe NASA must do to maintain America's lead in space exploration. Well, this is my personal opinion. It is shared by many of my contemporaries. Some additional points are in my written testimony that I hope you all read. Humans have always been driven to explore the unknown and to open new frontiers. Opening a new frontier demands three things. Resources, technology, and most important, the will to do it. In 1961, America was willing to take the risk of going to the moon. When President Kennedy made his commitment to land a man on the moon, not a single American had yet been an orbit. The success of the Apollo program was due to the collective efforts of 400,000 members of our team, engineers, operators, managers, and contractors. With a whole world watching, we accepted the challenge, took the risk, and changed the way that we all perceived our world. We accomplished the landing on the moon in eight years. Today, 45 years later, the next frontier, Mars, seems decades out of reach. Primarily because we do not have a national commitment. Our Apollo program made America preeminent in space and the world's most technologically advanced nation. It led us to the space shuttle, the greatest flying machine ever built by man, the International Space Station, ISS, and the Hubble Space Telescope. The spin-offs have infiltrated virtually all areas of our industry. While NASA's portion of the federal budget peaked at 4 percent in 1965, it has been below 1 percent for the past 40 years. While NASA has accomplished many things and made banned spaceflight much more routine, we have not challenged the next frontier, the manned exploration of Mars. That will only be possible if our government initiates and provides the funding for such a program. For the years, NASA has been subjected to more and more political pressure and the agency has grown increasingly political inside. This has left employees much less willing to express their opinions freely and the agency less attractive to the best and brightest of today's young professionals. An example. After years, after trying for years, NASA is still unable to reduce the number of space centers that they operate around the country in order to lower their overhead costs. Congress and local politicians have always went out and saved the one in their district. A commitment to push back the space frontier with a man landing on Mars would drive NASA's budget while the schedule would be controlled by the rate at which Congress funds it. This could also empower the agency to correct many of the deficiencies that have evolved over time. A Mars exploration vehicle will have to be assembled in Earth orbit. Moving out of Earth orbit would require heavy lift rockets like our space launch system and Orion crew capsule. A reusable launch vehicle similar to our space shuttle may be necessary in order to assemble it and interplanetary spacecraft. While these are all costly, they will be essential in order to move humans out of Earth orbit. Any Mars exploration program will have international partners. In that partnership, NASA should take a strong leadership role, as they did back in the Apollo program and not just be one more partner in an international effort. Hopefully it would encompass less politics and be better structured than the ISS partnership. ISS that we gave birth to in the 1970s is probably the most impressive piece of space hardware ever placed in orbit. While leading the international partnership, we transferred $3 to $5 billion to Russia to help resurrect their space industry. Increased our cost of the program by $15 to $20 billion. And we are now totally dependent on Russia to get American crewmen to and from the ISS. The success of our space program has always been dependent on private industry, and they delivered. As NASA grew less entrepreneurial, less efficient, and more bureaucratic, they inspired new, so-called, commercial space companies. Most of these companies have been subsidized by government funding. NASA has less control over their development, operations, and consequently their results as they did in the past. Some people suggest that private space companies should collaborate with NASA for space missions beyond Earth orbit, which means sharing the cost. While commercial companies will always contract with NASA for the hardware and the technology, the government will always be expected to pay the cost of exploration, funded by tax dollars, of course. Space exploration is far too expensive for commercial companies that are driven by profit and return on investment. Space exploration does not satisfy either of these criteria. Government agencies are not profit driven. Government underwriting permits our agencies to guide, develop, and manage the technology. Our country's return on investment is the private industry commercialization of the technology that's developed. These commercial companies move much faster than government agencies, production by private industry will shorten the timeline for our launch to Mars. In the absence of a Mars exploration program and limited funding, NASA has initiated the asteroid redirect mission, possibly to the Lagrange points. Today they justify it as a first step in the mission to Mars. Anything it might do that could help a Mars mission could be more officially done with some other projects. While we work on overcoming the problem of radiation exposure and trying to speed up travel, we should return to the moon to develop a crew facility for semi-permanent living. Many scientists today are saying, send robots to Mars because humans are too costly and it's too dangerous. NASA should continue to exploit both man and unmanned missions, but humans will always be much faster and more efficient because we can think and act in real time. There are two things I believe we should focus on also. Eliminating permanently any dependence on other countries for launch capability. Two, find some way for NASA administrators to become less subject to changes in the administration every four years. The Apollo program took eight years and cost $110 billion at today's dollars. And the benefits to our society have been priceless. A man landing on Mars will probably take twice as long and cost up to three times as much in today's dollars. That is a fraction of what our annual federal budget deficits have been running and deficits do not have a return on investment. The human desire to explore and settle new frontiers will be satisfied if not by Americans than by others. Humans somewhere will certainly return to the moon and go on to Mars. I believe that we have the resources and the technology, but do we have the will to tackle the next frontier Mars? Thank you.