[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 156 (2010), Part 4] [House] [Page 5469] [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]{time} 1015 CANCELING THE CONSTELLATION PROGRAM (Mr. GENE GREEN of Texas asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 minute and to revise and extend his remarks.) Mr. GENE GREEN of Texas. Mr. Speaker, I rise today in strong opposition to the President's budget proposal to cancel our human space flight program. It's under the Constellation Program, which was authorized both by Democrat and Republican Congresses respectively, that NASA is currently developing new launch vehicles capable of traveling to the moon, Mars, and other destinations. Not only does canceling the Constellation Program jeopardize America's leadership role in human space exploration, but it will have a detrimental effect on our economy, projecting job losses of 30,000 nationally. Given our current economic downturn, we can't take the possibility of losing these jobs lightly. Our government has already invested literally years and billions of dollars in this program. We should build on these investments and not abandon them, especially considering the private sector will not be able to build a better, faster, cheaper rocket before the Constellation Program is slated to be finished because the technologies NASA proposed to use do not exist yet, nor has any destination been chosen. Constellation is our only hope to close the current 5-year gap in U.S. access to space, and I encourage my colleagues to join me in opposition to the proposal to close Constellation. ____________________