17 January 1996
Remarks Prepared for Distribution
As I stand up here, I think of some of my experiences in the space program, and one that comes to mind is an experience I had in Bozeman, Montana, at Montana State University. Senator Burns had invited me to come out to Montana, because he is just absolutely committed to the space program. He shares the vision. There really isn't any major work for our program out in Montana, but he wanted the people of Montana to get a sense of the excitement of the program.
After a tour of Montana State University, there was a luncheon, and most of the people who came to the luncheon were just citizens of Bozeman. They weren't scientists or engineers, physicists, or astronomers. They were just average, hard-working people in that city. The day before I left we got those unbelievable pictures back from Hubble of that star factory with the huge column.
Could I have the first slide ?
Remember this one? Can you see that? It was breath-taking, and as I showed this slide, I explained to them that this was about 7,000 light years from Earth, that this was about a light year long, about six trillion miles, and as I talked about the whole process of origins, you could hear the gasps in the room.
Afterwards there was a standing ovation. It wasn't for me or for the scientific community that took this unbelievable picture. It became very clear to me, in this moment that it isn't just space physicists and astrophysicists who get excited about the new discoveries that NASA is making about the universe. Everyone shares in the excitement produced by the space science and astronomy programs, because every human being shares this need to understand the origins of our universe.
The other night I watched the evening news, and every channel I switched to, the reporters were so very excited about the deep-field pictures that had come in from the Hubble Space Telescope.
Last night I met with a number of people, and we talked about the recent astrophysics accomplishments. Geoff Marcy, the San Francisco State University astronomer, said, "Guess what I'm going to show the press tomorrow?" And he took out a slide, and he showed the discovery of two Jupiter-sized planets; one about one-half astronomical unit (AU) from the star, and the other about three and a half AU's from the star. I was overwhelmed. What an exciting time to live in. If I had to pick a time for great excitement and great contributions in science and our understanding of the universe, it would be now.
We are opening up the space frontier, making leaps and bounds by the day. Not by the year or the decade. We are making great strides by the day.
What is happening here? These new pictures of the universe strike a chord. They touch the human spirit, not just the intellect. They touch the need to explore and to understand the origins of the universe. These needs are basic to life.
Most of us spend our time worrying about the day-to-day issues. But when you step back and say, Why are we doing this? Why are we here? Is the answer that we are just after food and shelter? Or is it that we are in search of intellectual nourishment; that we are seeking to understand nature and our relationship in the universe; or that, if you will, some people may be seeking to understand their God?
Questions like these and the people who ask them are the reason that I walk into work every day and pinch myself for the privilege that the President gave me. The privilege to be the NASA Administrator.
Then, because AXAF-I is only an imaging instrument, we're going to launch ASTRO-E. AXAF-S was canceled, and the phoenix that came out of the ashes -- due to the great work of Steve Holt, the folks at Goddard, and the scientists working on the project -- is ASTRO-E. So we'll get a spectroscopy mission, and the cost for this mission will be a pittance. I think that NASA's contribution is about 40 million dollars for the focal plane and cooling equipment. We're working cooperatively with the Japanese. America doesn't have to do everything; cooperation really pays off. So we will be able to fly the full complement of our experiments.
The European Space Agency (ESA) has been working on the X-ray Spectroscopy Mission (XMM) and the International Gamma Ray Astrophysics Laboratory (INTEGRAL). And they just placed the Infrared Space Observatory (ISO) into orbit.
Our next big step in space astronomy is in the infrared. We have to move beyond the visible. The Space Infrared Telescope Facility (SIRTF) is on the planning boards. And, God help us, if the creek doesn't rise -- we will be launching SIRTF. The folks working on SIRTF technology have done an absolutely wonderful job of risk reduction in the program. The tests look good. We have a set of beryllium mirrors that people thought couldn't be built. We don't have any hysteresis -- or at least that's what the initial tests say. We have a cryo-system operating at low temperatures. And it looks wonderful. Just three or four years ago, the focal plane technology looked like it was okay, and I cannot believe what's happened. If you look at the performance of that focal plane, it's beyond belief if you start projecting forward what could happen.
We're going to open up the whole universe to our eyes; young stars, planets, faint IR galaxies. We're going to complete what the decadal plan, the Bahcall Report, set out. I know because he keeps coming back and checking with me. I don't know if John Bahcall is here. I'm sure he is.
I believe the American Congress understands that it would be irresponsible, absolutely irresponsible, to stop at this point in time with the unbelievable work that has been done with SIRTF. Our ream has reduced SIRTF by a factor of five or ten in cost and weight. They have outstanding science. They've done the risk reduction program. They've programmed adequate funds for this year and next to complete the risk reduction activity and to launch it on schedule. And I will, personally, throw my body across the tracks if anyone interferes with SIRTF. (Applause.)
But before SIRTF, we're going to launch AXAF. Nothing is going to stand in the way. And complementing the work of AXAF, we will fly the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA). And, in fact, we have started the competition on SOFIA.
That is what we've done and what remains to be done, and I'd like to now talk about the changes that are going to happen. But before I talk about science, astronomy, technology and engineering, I'd like to talk about mind set.
To be successful in the future NASA must change. We must change our organization and our mind set. We must reduce operations costs. We must develop a new launch vehicle.
Every year you hear the same thing. I've heard the same thing now for four years. Too many people give in to thinking that we can continue be strung along for another year -- that we can put off change. You cannot do that. There are those in the science community who like to talk of the Hubble Space Telescope operating for another two decades. We cannot do that either. The Hubble is wonderful. It's terrific, but at a quarter of a billion a year, we must plan a replacement to the Hubble, and we cannot say, because the budget's declining, we're going to put it off indefinitely. We have to begin now. We have to work on the technology. But the next mission doesn't have to cost two billion dollars to build and four billion dollars to operate. It doesn't have to weigh 25,000 pounds.
I'll talk some more about this, but the fact of the matter is that in the planetary area, we have convinced ourselves that we can build scientific spacecraft with the capacity to do outstanding science for a factor of ten to thirty less money, ten to thirty less weight. And we're in the process of making it happen.
Just two and a half years ago, after the Mars Observer disappeared -- we're still searching for it -- I returned from hiking in the mountains, and someone said, "Did you find it out there?" I said, "No." (Laughter.) But seriously, we have got to face up to the challenge of returning to Mars, and do it.
I'll come back to the approach that I propose for NASA's next mission to Mars. But, in short, we believe that the planetary community was right to start thinking about paths for reaching the planets that are cheaper, and about more unconventional ways of getting there. I'll talk more about this in a minute. But now let me talk to you about the structure and the approach that are needed to achieve our goals in the space sciences.
Constituencies are not the people that work on the program. The constituencies are the American people in Bozeman, Montana, who gasped when they saw those pictures. These people are NASA's customers. They don't care about spectrum. They don't care about science disciplines. They don't care about organization structures. They care about fundamental questions.
So, what we need to do in the space science community is to become more interdisciplinary, and to organize along the lines of fundamental science questions.
For space science, we have worked with the community to define four themes. I'm not saying that we're chiseling these themes in stone. In fact, I'm throwing it out today because we'd like to get some feedback. The head of space science, Wes Huntress, is back in Washington, and he couldn't make it out here. But talk to Wes. Talk to Ed Weiler on the science Board of Directors. We have a number of NASA people here.
I'll outline these four scientific themes in a minute, but what we want to do is to get our work organized around these four themes. And we need some strategic thinking around the themes.
Wes Huntress is going to set up a Board of Directors who will be responsible for the intellectual leadership of the Office of Space Science (OSS), with each Director having responsibility for a major theme. One theme is Origins. Another theme is Sun-Earth Connection. The two other themes are: Exploration of the Solar System and Structure and Evolution of the Universe. So, there will be a Board of four people.
With regard to the scientific process, we will have three divisions -- not an astrophysics division, not a space physics division, not a planetary systems division. We'll have a research division, an advanced technology and mission study division, and a flight program division. And it will be the responsibility of these implementers -- these three division directors, plus the four on the Board, plus the associate administrator. These people will manage the enterprise.
We're completely restructuring the Headquarters' model from a command and control concept into a concept that addresses fundamental questions and is based on intellectual connectivity.
We have been shamefully wasting money in mission operations by making more work for people to do instead of utilizing digital technology, expert decision-making systems, and thinking spacecraft. In capitalizing on these approaches, we are going to take the money that we are able to save in a declining budget and put it into research.
Someone last night said, "Hey Dan, this Origins is so exciting, why don't you go back to the Congress for more money?" Forget it. We have been given a budget at NASA, and that budget is coming down. So, to start something new, you must become more efficient or eliminate jobs. We are prepared to step up to this challenge because the Origins program and the space science domain are so important.
What do we do now? In some cases we're ready to transition to private industry, yet in other cases we are not ready. I want you to understand my number one priority for new starts is to fix this launch vehicle problem, because without launch vehicles that work, without launch vehicles that are low cost -- and I'm not going to accept this $10,000 a pound -- you can't do space science. We need low-cost launch vehicles.
To the scientists who work in the universities and the talented people at NASA, I said, "Get me a launch vehicle that costs no more than a million dollars" -- so that we can deliver a hundred or two hundred pounds to orbit. Students can build spacecraft that cost hundreds of thousands of dollars instead of tens of millions of dollars. They can build spacecraft for multiple launches. They've taken that into their fold. Now the Agency is going to do what it has to do. We're not going to have another $10 billion shuttle program. No way. No how. Because that will sink the Agency.
When I first became Administrator, I went out to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), and I was meeting with some of the engineers there. A young engineer walked up to me and said, "Dan, I'm so frustrated." He said, "I have the greatest set of technologies, and they won't fly it."
And I said, "Why?"
He said, "I walked into the program manager, and the program manager said to me, 'Did you fly it in space?' And I said no. The program manager said, 'Well, when it flies in space, come back and see me.' "
And that has been a real dilemma for us.
Today, NASA is focusing its technology program. We are committing to a solid funding line for technology in terms of the New Millennium program. The Congress supports it. The President supports it. And we're going to ramp up to 50 million dollars a year for technology, not just to do in the lab, but those things that can only be proven in space, on orbit -- not just on a ballistic flight. We are going to do it. We have three flights on the books already.
We are not going to wait 700 years to do these things. We are starting it now with the work going on the ground. And if we need more flight experiments, we'll do it. But we're talking about flight experiments that cost tens of millions of dollars, not billions, and take two years to develop, not decades.
So the concept that we have come up with is to design a little, build a little, test a little. And on a constant basis we will set some long-term visions for ourselves. Where it's necessary to have a major program in development, we will do it, but people will have to establish why they must take billions of dollars and decades to do them. We feel very comfortable about this.
There will be four leaders who will have the intellectual responsibility to interact with the scientific community and work with Wes Huntress on his Board of Directors to define question-oriented issues and not just leave things in little boxes with respect to specific disciplines.
We are working on defining a road map for each of these four areas by the summer of 1997. So we have lots of time. We don't want this to be a bureaucratic NASA program. We want the full scientific community to interact with us, and Wes has a process he's establishing toward that end. We want to involve this community to define what we should be doing in the next steps. Today, what I'd like to do, instead of covering the whole world, is to focus on Origins. It excited me. It's personal, and I'm a little emotional about it. But the result we're seeing is, I think, very logical.
In the Origins area there are three fundamental questions:
I was talking to my daughter's third-grade class one time, and I was telling them about the solar system. I told them about the Earth and the Sun, and Mercury, Venus and Mars and the relative positions of planets. And I talked about space travel. And then I told them the Sun was going to burn out in 5 billion years. The children got hysterical. (Laughter.)
But think of it not just through the eyes if the children. Think of it through your own eyes. Remember those times of insecurity you've had in your life when you're under stress and you have thought about the origin and the fate of the universe and the way you relate to it. The origin and fate of the universe are a part of life. We are not just talking about something that is just scientific. It relates to every human being.
The three basic questions identified for the Origins program are a starting point. They are not chiseled in stone, but they are offered here to cause a discussion to occur. If these are not the right three questions, or we don't have the right four basic scientific themes or the right goals, challenge us. Challenge me in the question session, and challenge Ed Weiler and Wes Huntress thoroughly. We have a year or so to pull this together as we work on the roadmap.
By the way, one of the reasons for reorganizing the program and developing roadmaps is that the biggest criticism I got when I had town hall meetings with the American public, was "We see you do individual things, but we don't understand the vision. We don't understand what you're doing. We don't understand what questions you're trying to ask."
So, now we're asking you to work with us. We have a year and a half to pull this together. And this will be our communication tool with the American people.
Given these three questions, here are the five goals that we've tentatively identified:
I see Alan Dressler here. All he wants is a four meter optic that goes from a half micron to 20 microns. And I said to him, "Why do you ask for such a modest thing? Why not go after six or seven meters?" (Laughter.)
But my point is that somehow in the scientific community the first number you put down on a piece of paper is chiseled in stone and you hold on to it forever. And we have years to work this, so I think we ought to relax and not make these major commitments.
You know, it's easy to say, "I want to go take an image." But before you take an image, why not find out what's out there and see if we can make direct detection of the planet, not indirect detection, and then see if we can do some analysis?
Now, don't everyone get uptight and upset about this. I was interviewed by the BBC today, and they said to me, "How could you have a road map of science? Scientists need free-flowing thought."
And I said, "Look, you need to have some road map in your head and some objective of where you want to be in 25 years. Whether you get there or not is not as relevant as having a sense of direction that communicates to your customers, the American people. And then you know what kind of technology to develop."
We haven't had a technology road map for NASA. We haven't had a strategic plan for NASA. We have a five-year plan, but I would like to have a 25-year plan. And if we change the vision every five years, that's okay. But my concern is we're still flying ground-based telescope technology in space. The telescope that flies in space is designed for one G, so is it any wonder that the Hubble is 25,000 pounds? There's no vision of where we need to be. And, again, I'm picking on Alan Dressler, and I shouldn't, but he came to me and said, "All I want is a four-meter telescope." And I said, "What beyond that?" And he said, "Get me a four-meter telescope." That's not good enough.
Time is a commodity that you can only make withdrawals on. You can't make deposits on time. As we put away time worrying about how we'll survive in the future, we will miss the boat.
NASA is not about now or next year or five years from now. NASA is not about the grants that people have. NASA is about opening up the space frontier intellectually, spiritually and economically to the American people. At a time when industry can't see beyond two or three years in their R&D program, NASA shouldn't be concentrating on the next five years. We should be 25 years out there. We should assume that the space program is going to be vibrant and will contribute to our society. We should not draw in our haunches any time someone snarls at us, and apologize for our existence.
We've got to make sure that space exploration is an essential part of the future of this country. We are going to start new things. We will have a vision. We don't have to guarantee this as a contract. This is a key point I'd like to make, because people are nervous about that.
In terms of some of these questions, issues, themes, and goals, we've recently received what's called the ExNPS Report. ExNPS is shorthand for Exploring Neighboring Planetary Systems. The name is funny, but it's a terrific report, and if you haven't read it, read it. This report was also reviewed by Dr. Charles Townes' blue ribbon panel. And it looks like it makes sense.
Then there's Alan Dressler's report from the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA) and also the NASA Astrophysics Interferometer Working Group Report. These are the people from the science community that we've involved so far. In my mind, this level of participation is still not enough. This is a big deal. Wes Huntress and Ed Weiler will be working with you to figure out how we're going to involve the community and chart a course for Origins.
By the way, we're not looking for 100 percent consensus. I don't care if we have 100 percent consensus, but I do expect 100 percent support. It's very important. Every time you search for consensus, you get zip. So we're going to try and work to get to maybe 60 or 70 percent consensus.
But we have made a decision that, when you are trying to answer basic questions, you don't care whether the facility is an airplane, in space, or a telescope on the ground. And if someone else is not doing what needs to be done, then you do it. You don't just say, "We're a space agency." We're a space agency because we're exploring the space frontier, and you can explore the space frontier with ground-based facilities. If it helps us target stars that we should go after in a deeper sense with a more expensive space probe that we can't do from the ground, then there's nothing wrong.
We have an investment that's getting pretty significant in the Palomar Interferometer Test bed, because we have to develop these interferometric technologies. And you don't want to start in space; you want to get this understanding on the ground. And then we made a fundamental decision to invest in the Keck II and the dual Keck Interferometer. I've got to give Wes Huntress credit for this decision. We want to search for planetary disks and individual Jupiter-sized or smaller planets around other stars, and it is right that NASA do this.
Finally, there are certain technological paths that just don't get picked up. NASA has a responsibility to develop focal planes if someone else doesn't. For years we depended upon the Defense Department, but their mission is going this way and our mission is going that way. So, if we sit and wait for manna from heaven from the Defense Department -- not because they're bad, but they're going a different way -- it's not right. If we can develop focal planes and test them on a ground-based telescope and provide that technology, by god, NASA ought to do it. We're absolutely committed to this.
What has happened is we've opened up the technology flood gates a little bit, and there's been a gusher. You need only read the ExNPS report to see this. There are a lot of good suggestions, and we'll do what is really appropriate for us to do if it helps the Origins mission. In the scientific community, we have a fixed amount of dollars, so we have to determine the most effective way of spending those dollars, because what we want to do is answer basic questions.
The other thing to do is to understand extrasolar zodiacal light. That's probably one of the most important parameters we have to determine before we go and build these systems. And if you don't know what the extrasolar zodiacal light is in terms of intensity and distribution -- I'm not sure that SIRTF will give us the spatial distribution -- we may have to launch a small satellite or have some ground-based experiments to get at that measurement of extrasolar zodiacal light. So that's something that needs to be done. And finally, it would be awfully nice to launch this 85 centimeter telescope (SIRTF) with incredible focal planes.
And, now we're not quite there yet, but it looks like we have figured out how to build not just a beryllium mirror, but beryllium optical systems. It is much less weight than the glass we have on Hubble. And because we use current technology, we can learn how to get rid of the hysteresis so when you thermally recycle it you don't get deformation.
So, that's the next step. And, of course, we must have Hubble. I want to tell you we cannot say that because we have to have Hubble we can't start anything else. The point in time is going to come where we're going to have to phase down Hubble money to start something new.
I want you to understand that this NASA budget is not isolated from the rest of the debate, and if you didn't see them shut down the government, you don't understand the intensity. America's going through a transition. We're going from a manufacturing to an information-based society, and getting more global in our ways. America has got to change along with the government, and it is okay for the space program to bear its fair burden in this because there were things that were not very efficient. There were approaches that were not too terrific.
I'm so proud of this agency. Our budget has really taken a beating, and yet we started 25 new programs. We did not cancel any of our ongoing programs, and we're hitting every schedule on time, except for this turkey launch vehicle that doesn't work. If not for that, we would have met every single schedule. So you see I'm a little passionate about fixing this launch vehicle problem and not putting our head in the sand and saying, "We can only do science." Well we're not going to be able to do science unless we fix that problem. And a launch vehicle solution not going to happen commercially because the industry is undercapitalized.
Then, we have an experiment which is in it's early phase, and I think we need to really take a look at accelerating it -- that's the Space Interferometry Mission (SIM) program -- where we could do world-class astrometry and look at Neptune-size planets, if they exist. And in the next ten years we've got to develop technology for a Hubble replacement. And, again, I mean, maybe you'll get four meters out of it, but maybe we can get five. I don't know how big you have to go, but if we could do it and on the margins if it's not expensive, that would be just fine.
To the first order, if you stick with the 13 parsecs, the baseline will be about 100 meters and one to two meter telescopes. The spectroscopic capability in the infrared will be in the 7 to 17 micron range. That is the minimum that will allow us to get ozone, CO2, and water, and maybe establish some correlation between ozone and oxygen to get the real answers.
This will be a significant program, but I don't believe it has to cost billions of dollars. A one-meter light bucket might cost some 30 million to 40 million dollars, tops. Put up a few of those. Put up a beam for some tens of millions of dollars. (Figure out how to do that from the space station.) A nice, stable beam. Maybe we can do a beam, combiner, and it might work. Now, maybe you want a linear array, or maybe you want a non-linear array. This is not important.
The issue is that you've got to get a mind set which says, "In 10 years we want to be there; what's the best outline now working these technology problems? Let's spend our time now looking at the problems of zodiacal light in our own solar system." Maybe we have to have the spacecraft sitting out at five AU. Well, if you go out to five AU, the diameter is going to go down by a factor of four. That'll make it less expensive to build, but it'll be more expensive to get there. But in 1998, if we could prove that electric propulsion works and we have a small lightweight spacecraft we could zap right out to Jupiter's orbit and it might be a much more cost effective approach. Then we can get results back from SIRTF and other ground-based systems and understand exosolar zodiacal light, and we're in.
I'm not making any guarantees. I'm not making any promises. I'm just saying this is something to shoot for instead of going around circles and trying to see where we can go off path today.
And then clearly there's the next task, perhaps in 25 years, if we can figure out how to build a half-kilometer square of glass -- I shouldn't say glass -- a collecting area. If we could have very long base line distances, that kind of a system in the infrared could allow us to image a planet around a star within 13 parsecs of Earth, if it exists. A terrestrial-size, Earth-size planet, with a resolution to see ocean, clouds, continents and mountain ranges. And if that doesn't get your heart pumping, I don't know what will. (Laughter.)
Now, clearly there'll be someone who says, "It's impossible. If I extrapolate Hubble technology, I know it can't be done."
But I know of a bunch of people who are looking at other approaches. Please do not take everything here literally. What I am saying is that I want to challenge the intellectual capacity in this room. I want to challenge the intellectual capacity in America and around the world to say, "Hey, look, we're not afraid to make a tough call." Maybe it's thirty years, I don't know. Maybe another approach might be some crazy new propulsion system, and maybe we can take the picture closer up and relay it back. I don't know.
But we shouldn't get so worried and say with certainty what can't be done. We need to open our minds.
As great as the SIRTF detectors are, we need detectors that are perhaps five to ten times better. We need cryo-optical telescopes that are capable of operating at 35 degrees [K] and long-life, vibrationless coolers that operate at 10 degrees [K]. If we go with cryo units, these things will be out there for a few years and then they're done. We don't want them to do that. We want to be able to use them.
The nice part about interferometers is that with the free-flying units if one unit fails, you can send up a new unit. If new technology comes along, you can send up another unit. So you don't tie up everything in one haul, and you don't tie up everything waiting for data. As you launch these things, you get more and better resolution. That is why you can do this in this "design a little, test a little, and build a little" and everything kind of hangs together.
For the interferometer, we need dispersion-free delay lines and we need laser metrology down to picometers, but we can do it. Then there is the nulling system that drives it all -- you need to null out that star. You have to make a nice null that's down by a factor of a millionth to a hundred of a millionth and that drives the design and makes it very, very challenging.
Finally, in spacecraft pointing and control, we've got to achieve accuracy measured in sub-milli arc seconds.
Now, the interesting thing is that I thought these were the problems. Then the ExNPS team came in and briefed me. When they were done, I said, "Hey, I don't know that you solved it, but we have a real path. We know where we are going to solve this thing."
But what didn't satisfy me is that they haven't looked upon this as an integrated system. They didn't interconnect the optics. We had an old way of thinking. The optical people are over here locked in a concrete bunker with no communication. And the interferometric people are over there. We need some more multi-disciplinary integrated tools.
So I called Sam Venneri into my office, and I beat him to a pulp. (Laughter) And he's out at JPL today and they're talking about how they can bring these teams together. But here's the problem. Hubble -- and I have the numbers here. All right, here's Hubble. The optics on Hubble weigh 4,316 kilograms. That's for a 2.4 meter system. And it's five square meters roughly. So that 874 kilograms per meter square. Shameful!
Now, why is it? We built it like a brick you-know-what. (Laughter.) Because we designed this thing to operate at 1G. We designed this thing to try and suppress jitter and have no active control. We had this distortion problem because we put some quasi-static limit on this thing, and we were wrong. We didn't run the glass right. There was no way of correcting it on orbit short of re-doing the whole thing or putting a contact lens on, if you will.
So we have to open our minds and say, "Let's design a telescope that's going to operate at 0 G. Let us think about membranes. Let us think about active controls and sensors. We should be using lasers to sense the optical figure instead of building extremely heavy mirrors to maintain figure. Let us think about smart focal planes and build the information system right over the focal plane. Let's think about things that you could launch and then adjust, on orbit. This is the kind of thinking I'm needing. Let's throw away glass. Glass is for the ground. Let's think about using composites. And, by the way, if we built a mirror -- we're going to need a mirror for the infrared -- we've figured out how to solve the bulk of this problem.
Why do we have to hug that ground-based technology? I'm being very careful not to specify what the solution is going to be, but certainly there are a variety of different technologies we ought to be looking at. And I think it's shameful that no one's doing it.
Could I have the slide(figure 2[Unavailable for Web viewing.])? You don't see any familiar continents there. The picture before you today is an artist's concept. William K. Hartman painted this series of 12 images to show us a view of the universe from Earth at distances ranging from ten astronomical units to one hundred thousand astronomical units. You start out at Earth and you move 10 AU, 100 AU, 1,000 AU, 10,000 AU, 100,000 AU. He is showing us what we might see as we start approaching a new star that is forming planets. Ultimately, this might be a planet, and maybe we can figure out in 25 years how to take a picture of this planet. We'll see what we see.
But we don't have to say we will succeed or fail by taking this picture. What we will say whether we succeed or fail is that we had the courage to step forward instead of complaining about the obstacles in our way. We will have opened up the space frontier for the next generation.
Thank you very much. (Applause.)
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