Sherwood Boehlert Space Quotations

I am extremely uneasy about this budget. This budget is bad for space science, worse for Earth science and possibly worse for aeronautics.

NASA cannot use aeronautics and science as a piggy bank to fund human space flight.

We need to put together a full picture of the actual risks and costs of the space shuttle before deciding whether and how the program should be run.

The decisions we make in the next few months will affect the future of the space program for decades to come, ... They need to be made deliberately. That's the proper way to honor the memories of the Columbia crew.

This budget is bad for space science, worse for earth science, perhaps worse still for aeronautics. It basically cuts or de-emphasizes every forward looking, truly futuristic program of the agency to fund operational and development programs to enable us to do what we are already doing or have done before.

The U.S. Commission on Ocean Policy just this week recommended a partial transfer, and the president's commission on space exploration, headed by former Air Force Secretary Pete Aldridge, is also reportedly considering such an idea, ... I'm skeptical of such moves for a number of reasons, but, in any event, such a move wouldn't necessarily free up funds for space exploration. The assumption behind such recommendations is always that the money should be transferred along with the program, so NASA would actually have less of a 'piggy bank' for exploration after such a transfer occurred.