reflective in the announcement of the president's budget yesterday. that approach is what bold season here to talk about this morning and i'm not going to steal his thunder. let me say that only içó am convinced and president obama is convinced that the newñi approa on which boldin will be elaborating in a moment is the right approach for this time, these challenges and these opportunities. it is not a retreat from u.s. leadership in humanñr spaceflig, as some are asserting, but rather an exciting and promising path forward that invests in ner ideas, technologies and the complemently strengths of nasa and theçó private sector. >> and other roles in nassau besides space flight, charlie served as pastor of safety as to not and chief of the division at the johnson space center and assistant deputy administrator at nasa headquarters. in june, 1994, he left nasa and return to active duty in the marine corps. subsequently, he served as deputy commanding general of marine forces in the pacific, commanding general in charge of marine forces in support of desert thunder and deputy commander of u.s. forces in japan, and commanding general of the third marine aircraft way. he retired in august, 2004, with the wreck of major general. thereafter, he served in management positions in the private sector and on a number of academic and corporate boards before being nominated by president barack obama last year and confirmed by the united states said it as the administrator of nasa. he began his duties at the nasa head last year. what a career. there is more to come. this is an individual who has demonstrated again and again that he truly has the right stuff. i have no doubt that what he is bringing to nasa is change we can believe them. give you the nasa administrator, [applause] >> thank you for the and deserved compliments and introduction. john and i have become very fast friends in my time here in washington, d.c. and i think he cut in many respects, we're kind of strangers and this town. understand things when i say to them because some of it is because i will talk to you the way i would if we were in columbia, south carolina, or houston, texas, or if you came and visited me at the marine corps stationed in miramar. i want to take all of you for joining us this morning and i want to thank the national press club for hosting us. we truly appreciate this opportunity to share more details with us for the president's plan for nasa and the path forward in it before i go farther, i want to take an opportunity to publicly acknowledge a group of people that i think sometimes do not get think enough. over the last few days, depending on how you read what you have read, some people have been bashed a little bit over the last few days. those are the people who work in consolation for the past few years. i call most of them friends. i consider them a member of the family. i want to take this opportunity to thank them for their years of dedicated effort. they are not a hobby shoppers as some of you in the media have called them occasionally in the past few days. they are really dedicated civil servants and contractors who have committed their lives and they have been focused on a dream of aggressive and gold exploration. yesterday, we unveiled president barack obama's historic budget launch mass on an ambitious effort to help us all realize the streams of the people in the constellation in a more sustainable manner. we could go into what we are doing this but you can read numbers as well as i can. i don't need to dwell on that. when you have a program that is going to cost a fortune to resurrect and schedules are getting harder to make without much more money than wisdom says, you pick a new course. that is what we have done. we want to explore new worlds and develop innovative technology and fostered new industries and we want to increase our understanding of birth, our solar system, and the universe. among the money fresh proposals is enhanced partnership started today, we have with us some pioneers in that field who will be working with and i will tell you more about the many moment. first, i would like to say how excited we are to have direction from our president to launch a new era of innovation and discovery. reaching and living in space is complicated. it is dangerous. it is full unknown. the technology we need to sustain our leadership as a space exploring nation will take ingenuity. the president has now given us resources, including $6 billion of new funds over the next five years for significantly increased technology research and development, a long-term plan to think big and grow and imagine and to move as vigorously toward the dreams for tomorrow. tough budget choices in the past have led to dictate to under- investment in space technology. we have experienced cuts to critical mass a program. this includes earth science, earth observation, aeronautics, space exploration, science, education, and more. we would have cut short the operational life of the international space station at the height of its promised potential. we believe that the technology shortfall we face is so fundamental that incremental change or tinkering on the margins will not be sufficient to address current or future needs. rather, a fundamental re- baseline of our efforts is needed for you must invest in a new innovation for space technology and new ways of doing business if we are to develop a space exploration and development program that is truly sustainable over a long term. this plan gives as a roadmap to even more historic achievements as its first innovation, employs americans in exciting jobs, and engages people around the world. it pledges us to a renewed commitment to invention and development in the creative and entrepreneurial spirit that is at the core of our country's character. the president has asked us to develop a detailed strategy for executing this plan in the weeks to come. our goal is to re-bible as nasa and introduce reforms needed for the continued excellence. to do all this, the president has increased the nasa budget over the next few years, an extraordinary show of support in these tough budgetary times. today, several of our key partners in this future efforts have traveled to washington to be with us. we ask them for their boldest ideas and concepts, the things we truly need to make commercial space travel a reality. it is proposals. this is by no means the end of this process. it is a fantastic start. i will let them tell you briefly in their own words about what is on the drawing boards in their shops. let me also try to answer the questions that many of you are asking. what will massive gain from increased partnerships with industry to fly humans into space? the initiative supports and fosters the commercial space flight industry and its growing capabilities by leveraging private investment and reducing development cost to the taxpayer. it endorsed the commercial -- the commercial systems can be say. it ensures that commercial systems can safely and reliably transport humans and draws on our existing space flight experience and makes our specialists available to provide insight and expertise. with many bright minds working on our problems, we may soon have the prospect of multiple providers of transportation. we would have safe, reliable, redundant domestic capability. we do not have this today. this is the crux of our dependence on our russian partners and the soyuz spacecraft and the reason we will have a day -- that the capability when the shell retires later this year. we want robust backup capability in human space flight and we want to be made in america. we are departing from the model of the past in which the government-funded spacek to the. this represents the entrance of the opera -- onto power mindset into a field that is poised for rapid growth and new jobs. nasa will be driving competition, opening new markets, and access to space. this is a good investment for america we already depend on commercial companies to launch all of our nation's most precious military satellites. today, commercial companies launch all government communications whether it's in the tape -- upon which our lives depend at home and abroad. the major benefit of this new partnership is the potential for thousands of new high-tech jobs and spinoffs of other businesses that can support this industry and take advantage of affordable access to space. there will be jobs in propulsion, communication, and other industries, exploration jobs and drive innovation throughout our economy and nasa will leave this economic competitiveness and growth. there is a misconception that commercial crew means putting our astronauts in the hands of untested providers. on the contrary, these will be the same providers will be transporting our multibillion- dollar satellites. america's largest aerospace firms have, for decades, established expertise in human space flight and they, too, would be eligible to compete for this program. even the new entrants will have demonstrated successful flight by the time they would carry astronauts in addition to cargo. all of us travel on airplanes and we feel safe because we know the government has set standards and overseas periodic inspections. for space flight, safety concerns are even more serious. these commercial flights will have to follow the same safety assurances to which nasa holds itself. as most of you know, i am a former astronaut and had flown four times on the space shuttle i know personally the great challenges in sending humans into orbit and have lost friends in trying to do so. i pledge to you that i will make it my job every day to insure that everything is done efficiently and safely. i am blessed to lead a team of nasa employees who are the best and brightest and government. when my team commits itself to a goal, we have the will, the know how, and the commitment to attain it. we are also committed to do it right. as the augustine committee reminded us in the recent report to the president, american commercial aerospace industry has always built the nation's launch vehicles. over its 52-year life, nasa has built a deep foundations of experience and knowledge with a wide range of companies. these companies have been essential to all our successes from mercury to shovel, as well as our robotic missions and multibillion-dollar scientific satellite. the have long demonstrated they can do the job. the augustine committee also said there is little doubt that the u.s. aerospace industry from historical builders to the new entrance has the technical capability to build and operate new equipment. they believe that they have the capability to do this by as early as 2016. nasa itself has been mulling this idea for some time, believe it or not. in fact, i was personally involved in working the concept of commercial operation of our space transportation system as far back as my early days as a fledgling passed on in the early 1980's. it is not a new idea but rather an idea whose time has come. the future is unfolding before us now. it could not be more exciting. with low-cost and safe transport to space, more people will be able to have the transformative experience with which i have been blessed. kids will be able to realistically envision a career that involves space either going there were using it. as more of us travel into space, more will look back on our home planet with a special perspective that only space travel can provide. we'll expend the global bond we are already developing through the multinational partnership that has built and is sustaining the international space station. with commercial companies providing transportation services, nasa will be able to focus on the greatest challenges that lie. lie in areas where we already have a stellar track record, advancing cutting edge technology and scientific discovery and pushing the boundaries of new frontiers on providing future explorers with dramatically greater capabilities than we have today. we start down that path now. we have with us today our two funded participants in the commercial orgel transportation services program, space ex of california and orbital sciences of virginia. they are well on their way to demonstrations of cargo transport to the international space station and we look forward to their continued progress. today, i am also pleased to give you more details about the $50 million that nasa is according to five companies through an open competition for funds from the american recovery and reinvestment act of 2009. to support crew development efforts. each award he has proposed significant investment to leverage the taxpayer investment. it is a bold first step. while there are many viagra companies out there with which we hope to partner in the future, these five and our two participants are at the starting gate. they specialize in vertical takeoff and landing, life- support systems, low-cost satellites, and miniaturized avionics. they are payload specialists and builders of robotic spacecraft and new rockets that have never before existed. here is more about five companies getting grants today. ballou origin from washington is developing a rocket-propelled vehicle to fly multiple in -- estimates into space and offer free and opportunities for researchers to fly experiments in space in microgravitybluie origi. blue origin is the name of the company. the space exploration division of the boeing company headquartered in houston, texas, has been involved in the development of a new spacecraft system. boeing will receive $18 million to develop its space transportation system which includes a seven-person capsule that may launch a medium-class expendable launch vehicles. paragon space development corporation is a woman-owned headquartered in tucson, arizona. they have directly supported with space flight hardware more than 70 successful space flight missions involving the international space station, the mir space station, the space shuttle and soyuz. they will receive $1.4 million for a revitalization unit. sierra nevada corp. manufactures satellites. the company will receive $20 million to for the develop its space transportation system including the dream chaser, a seven-person spacecraft to be launched on a space vehicle. united launch alliance located in colorado is a joint venture of lockheed martin corp. and boeing. the ly expendable vehicles. courtesy of president barack obama, it is my pleasure to introduce to you in person. these space person i would like to ask the representatives of each of the companies to join me on stage and say a few words. ladies and gentlemen, these are the faces of the new frontier, the vanguard. we will certainly be getting this group -- adding to this group in the near future. the work is already started and we advance it one more step today. congratulations to all the winners. i would like to ask each of our commercial pioneers to say a word or two. robert middleman robertblue origin. brewster shaw from boeing. jane pointer. mike gass of united space alliance. mark ciranangelo. david thompson. there you go. [applause] >> good morning. thank you so much for hosting this great event this morning. my name is michael gass, i'm the president and ceo of united delonte alliance. we are excited to participate in this bold new era with our nasa partners. united launch alliance has been supporting our nation for expendable launch vehicles with over 50-years of experience. our current generation of atlas and delta launch vehicle started with a $5 billion private investment to develop these vehicles. the atlas and delta will be utilized to support commercial crew in the future. this new project we are starting to get the emergency detection system is about crusading to make sure we understand our system fully and be able to give the appropriate signal fo. this will be synergistic with their current mission. thank you again for this opportunity. >> good morning and thank you for the opportunity to speak. i am robert ,illmamilllman. working with nasa, we will work on two technologies in particular. we are developing a pusher escape system. the traditional tractor escape system involves the tower jettisoning. we will be developing an escape motor at the back of the capsule which will avoid the jettison event and because it will avoid consuming it on a nominal cost, it will eliminate costs. we will develop a pressure vehicle which is an all- composite structure for containing the astronauts. it will improve the durability over conventional technology and lower waste. thank you very much for the opportunity. >> thanks to all of you for being here and your interest in america's human exploration program. boeing in our principal teammates are looking for to advancing the state of our project. we have been working with this on our own because bigelow represents the most probable near-term market for a need for crude transportation -- crude transportation. we have the organ on this concept -- we have been working on this concept. the system that we develop will do the best job it can of satisfying all the market needs for transportation. 100 or so years ago, a young entrepreneur named bill bolling was able to develop products that enable the transfer of mail across the country in airplanes. that has grown into -- any of you who flew into washington, d.c., probably rode in on one of his product. we have grown up that way and for the last 50 years or so, we have been involved in every human space exploration program that was executed by the u.s. said. we have a vested interest in the international space station. we so much want to see iss lived up to its potential and part of that is having a robust logistics training with the delivery of cargo and crew in order to complete the research that will be enabled on the international space station. we have been in this game a long time and with their teammate, bigelow, we intend to be in it for a long time more. thank you for the opportunity. >> thank you. and good morning, everybody. jqback at paragon, i suddenly he a lot of cheering staff. we are excited about this moment. we have invested in and are developing with nasa, an array of technology for use on the international space station, on the moon, on mars, and all an array of settings, applications in space. our air revitalization system that we are developing is one it -- is the first of its kind because it will be a turnkey system that can be used on an array of missions, on pretty much any spacecraft. we are looking forward to working with the spacecraft developers are making sure it fits their needs. i also wanted to say that of course, at paragon, we are deeply committed to the development of space for human exploration. both in a commercial way and of course, over the years, paragon has been involved in the commercial development of space from our inception, from inside biosphere ii. we had the very first commercial experiment on the international space station which was really exciting for us. i think today, at paragon, we are incredibly proud to be here and to be part of the nation's space program. thank you very much. >> good morning. i am serangelo from the -- i am -- serangelo from the sierra nevada corporation. it takes a lot of team work and we have a great group of companies that are involved in our program. i would like to say that we had the experience of coming through in unfunded agreement with nasa for the last two years which is unusual. that has worked very well. we seek tremendous support from the team and tore out a nest agency. as a result, we have no advance to our program to be a very successful start. our program is based on a nasa vehicle that originated many years ago called the hl-20. we have brought the concept for and are thrilled to be part of this group to move that forward. >> i am dave thompson. we started this 28 years ago to develop the full commercial potential of space. with this perspective of three decades in this business, the obama administration hit the ball at of the park with its proposal for the new nasa approach to our civil space program. this new approach which represents the most dramatic change in our civil space activity and -- in at least the last 20 years is very consistent with what we have seen in this country and around the world over the past several decades. there is an increased reliance on an ever more capable private- sector. in this case, to deliver people to and from low orbit. this is an area that across a variety of applications whinging from satellite communications to space imagery collection, orbital law services, and no commercial cargo deliberate -- delivery represents about $5 billion per year around the world. it seems that this is the right time, this is the right direction for the agency to take in this new era. one reason i am confident that the private sector is up to the challenges that are ahead of us in this new era of commercial astronauts taxi services to and from lower court is because of the progress we have made over the past couple of years in developing the private cargo transportation system for the international space station. two of these systems will make their first flights to the station within the next year. i think that will pave the way, not too many years later, for the first launches of astronauts to low-earth orbit. these are challenges that we welcome and i would also, in addition to this new element of the nasa program, complement the obama administration and the space agency for strengthening our scientific programs that nasa carries out. most of you have studied the budget and will note that about a 30% increase in the budget for nasa science programs over the next five years and almost twice that much, about 60% increase in the agencies for spending on arts alliance which i think is one of the most important areas that nasa carries out. thank you very much. >> i am ken bauersach. we have a main facility out in california and two launch sites. one of the most exciting things to me about the nasa budget is it the knowledge is one of the biggest barriers to explore space and that barrier is how you pay for it. one thing you have to work in order to fix that issue is the relationships between the government and the contractors that provide the services. government, hopefully, will set the destination. the contractors, with their flexibility and creativity, should be able to come up with new and innovative ways to get the job done. spaceex had the opportunity to work with nasa to provide cargo services to the international space station since 2006. from firsthand experience, is a really great thing to watch what happens when you blend the skills that are only available in the government with the flexibility and creativity of private industry. >> if we could do one thing -- absolutely -- i would like to get a great shot. these are the faces of the new space frontier, folks. [applause] >> thanks to all of you who have come out today. mr. dingh, i think i'm ready for questions. [laughter] >> depauw thank you very much. please identify yourselves and the organization you are presenting and this is only for journalists. please. thank you. >> the budget is asking for $18 billion over five years. there isof a goal. do you have a destination and timetable for where you want to send astronauts? when do you think you would come up with a timetable to utilize all this technology? >> it is more than a couple of weeks but less than years. we are already starting to form teams that will help us come up with a schedule for how we will go about developing a new plan, a bold plan for exploration. if you ask me about destinations, i get in trouble but i will tell you that anybody who talks about exploration beyond low-earth orbit, there are places that come to mind, morris, the moon, asteroids, those are some of the definite destinations. i have one of my executives that keeps reminding me that i am limiting us when i talk about mars instead of places other than the solar system. i'm talking about in my lifetime. i will limited to moon, mars, *, and things like that. we hope very soon to be able to give you a definitive time schedule and we hope to reach some of these destinations. i will tell you that right now, as we are talking about today with the people we are honoring here, as i talk to them, they were asking what they can do to help i said that the number one thing we all can do is pull together, work together, and make sure we deliver things on schedule, meet our milestones, and make sure we come in on the cost that we said. that is what will be different if i cannot deliver that, you should throw me out. >> following up on that, if you are looking at the budget announcement yesterday, there was a lot of talk about in-or bad feeling. are you looking at primarily when the new type vehicles launched from the space station or in orbit, is that the primary role or are you looking at more the traditional from earth. >> when you talk aboutin-orbit refueling, this is what we talk about. we're talking about being able to launch with the lighter vehicle than would otherwise be required. if you think about it, the reason for the weight and the size of a lot of bagels is getting out of gravity well. it means you don't have to have complex and heavy and costly vehicles we have today. that is one thing. i would ask you to not be misguided by our desire to have on-orbit refueling sites. when i talk about change in the propulsion, we're taught me that going back to some stuff that nasa has on the shelf and their commercial partners have on the shelf whether it is ion engines and other things that you will know better than i do and you know they will bring arguments in the coming months. if you are a vasimer fan and you don't like ion and vice versa. what is exciting is that we will know how the national debate about where we should be going in terms of space exploration. scientists and engineers who have not had the opportunity perhaps the last decade or more to have these discussions in public will have them, i hope. if we do nothing but facilitate public discussion on where we should be going and how we go of their, then we will have accomplished a lot. >> the announcement from the president has been greeted with dismay in some areas that we are abandoning manned spaceflight and leaving it to the chinese, perhaps the indians and other nations to take the lead in exploring our own solar system. how do you respond to that when we were the nation that was in the forefront and landed men on the moon? what do you say to those people? >> we are still the nation that is in the forefront. we're still the nation to which everyone looks and with, everyone wants to partner. as i travel around the world, that message comes through loud and clear from all of our international partners. if i go back to saying that people think we are turning away from human spaceflight, i will share with you a story i got from jeff hanley this morning, the program manager for the consolation program. he got a message from a little girl that he adopted an invited their family to the launch. it was the greatest thing he had ever seen. she came back the next day and saw the launch. without anyone explaining anything to her, the little girl thought we were turning awayjeff took the time to explain that we are not abandoning any thing. we're probably on a new course of human spaceflight is in our dna. it is important for you all to help us explain to people who look at the headline. you write that line. make it accurate. we are not abandoning human space flight by any stretch of the imagination. we have 10 more years of involvement on the international space station. that is exciting we just hired some astronauts and houston who are somewhat offended that people think they have nothing to do. we have crews that we just named to will be spending one year of their life training in moscow just to get ready to spend six of their lives in orbit. that is exploration. that is the only space flight. i can catch on that until 2020. i have seven companies represented here who are telling me that they are excited about finding ways to get humans of this planet and into low-earth orbit. 4 and when the things we are abandoning man space flight, i respectfully disagree. we will perhaps get there quicker than before. if you look at flights to mars, game changing technology enables us to go to mars in days, not months. this is by doing the things we're about to do, by taking the money that president barack obama has given us in our nasa budget for the next five years, to use technology development. i am not trying to fool anybody that this will be easy. i still have to go to the other end of pennsylvania avenue. i am excited about the opportunity to do that. i now have a budget that allows me to walk to that end of pennsylvania avenue and present the program that i want all this to work on together. it has to be a partnership. some of you may have heard my comments on the budget rollout. this is a "we" thing. this is not a nasa thinker this is the nation. with congress and the administration, nasa and industry and academia, we have academia represented here, i will not call out the name of the school, but they are here. these are exciting times. anybody who was ever on a college campus over last 10 years and walked into an engineering school and sudley dearth of research going on -- and sought the dearth of research going on, that will change. help us to tell the story. i think it is exciting. >> yesterday was the anniversary of the columbia accident. it is my understanding that the constellation program was assembled as a direct response to that accident, the findings in the columbia accident investigation board which mentioned the absence of a national mandate prior to the accident and the fact that nasa was stretched too thin. how do you a corporate the lessons of columbia in this new venture, particularly the part that they identified as a lack of a national mandate? >> you limit the sources of lessons learned. our lessons learned cobol boy back to apollo 1. -- our lessons learned go all the way back to apollo 1. we might not have known everything we thought we knew. we felt really good about ourselves in 1986. i continue that i landed in the middle of a desert air -- edward air force base in the middle of the night on january 18. i went back home to houston and went through my debriefs and we took a break to watch the shelter alistair launch and 73 seconds into flight, i lost seven dear friends. we were awakened that this is hard. you really have to stay on top of your game. january 1, 2003, again, at the end of a mission where everybody was celebrating because nobody thinks that you will have a problem during reentry, except us, who are in the game who know is not over till it's over. that is why you call will stop because everybody can agree. our body is reminded that this is tough stuff. there are lessons to be learned from columbia, challenger, apollo 1, and other accidents and incidents we have along the way that did not get the press those did. the president has set a bold challenge. we are not drifting. i have had friends from houston who talk about flexible pats. a flexible pad is hard to grasp. let me help you. they said this is like alice in wonderland. you go everywhere and you go nowhere. we're not going everywhere. we have destinations we want to go to and we will go there incrementally. through our technology development, that will help determine where you go first. we want to take advantage of opportunities that come as the technology develops. i hope that answers your question about how we are taking the lessons of the past. >> you said to judge you by how well you keep this on track. given cost overruns on consolation and previous nasa programs, why will this be different? >> it will be different because the president has set out a budget that supports where we think we want to go and we are building programs based on the budget that we have and not building programs based on a dream. trains are really important. dreams are critical because without a dream, without a vision, a people perish. i am a visionary, if you want to call me that. i dream. i want to be a realistic dream and the president's has laid out a pretty healthy budget that we feel we can plan to the budget and stick to it. if you go all it back to the days of the sts, the space transportation system. at the time it was told to me that the brief was given to president nixon and he said he loved it, go do it. next morning, someone called and said that the president meant to say you'd get a certain amount of money and we struggled for the rest of the program. this president has said this is what he wants to do and here is the money to do it with, let me know if this supports that vision and we have said, "yes." will want to do is supported by the budget we were given. i have sufficient funds to do the things we need to do for this nation. you need to hold me responsible. i cannot say the president has not given me sufficient funds. >> to the issue of flying as trust and commercial vehicles, there was an unscientific poll in my head about people i talked to. i came up with a number of 60% astronauts saying that they would not do with an 40 percent would. this is the emotional. it is an emotional right stuff. they use logic to say the white would not go. how do you get beyond that? >> my message to the work force -- does everybody understand the question? this is all the emotional. the reason i started my comments by thanking the constellation team is because you have to understand that everybody has had a death in the family. to people who are working on this program, this is like a death in the family. everybody needs to understand that. we need to give them time to grieve and we need to give them time to recover. i have an incredible work force. also will servants and civilians. they have been through this before. this is part of the life of being in nassau. every time we managed to pull through it and i managed to recover and we go off and we do great things. this time will be no different. that does not make an employee at the kennedy space center or the johnson space center or marshall space flight center or a contractor that any of these seven people represent, that does not give them a sense of solace. they are facing reality i tell them we will get through this. stick with us, if you can. some of you will decide that this just is not exciting enough and you want to go do other things. i appreciate the service they have given and allow us to help you in your transition and difficult possible help you find work somewhere else that will be passionate to you. i'm a big person for passion. i am here because i impassioned about space exploration. otherwise, i would be sitting in houston, texas or san diego with my three granddaughters. i am passionate about this. i cry about this sometimes. so what? this is my life. this is their lives. give it a little time. they will come back and they will be as great as they have always been. there with them and give them some time. >> @ -- as nasa partners with the aerospace industry in the u.s., do you have any plans to involve russian companies in any way in the future after shuttle retirement and could you please specify the process of delivering iss in terms of russian participation after show retirement. >> i just a long conversation with a friend who is the head of the russian space agency to make sure he understood where the president wants us to go. he was excited as were all of our international partners about the president', expanding -- extending the life of the international space station until 2020. the russians have been an incredible partner through the years and they will remain so. most of you know that when the shuttle retires at the end of this year, our primary means of getting astronauts to the international space station and then where else will be the soyuz spacecraft. i love it but i have never flown on it. the bad part about it is it leaves us without redundancy. if you talk to any after not, no matter what they think, most of us will tell you what we think is critical for the nation is reliable, redundant access to space. when we retired the shuttle and it is the right thing to do, by the way, for people who might want to ask me that, it is definitely the right thing to do perry would retire the shuttle at the end of this year, we will no longer have a reliable, redundant way to get humans into space. the sooner our industrial partners can deliver, the sooner we will at least have some redundancy and our ability to get there. two is better than one, several is much better than two. we will get there. >> one last question. >> thank you. our houston abc station is very interested in the civil space program because we are headquartered in houston. they are concerned about jobs. one of the president's main goals is job creation. is there any possibility or plan that sending money to these companies, not as boeing, will go toward job creation? >> when you look at dollars plan for a program, those dollars can usually translate into jobs. the more money on a program, as a general rule, the more jobs will be involved. the exciting thing -- i would have to ask our partners -- the more money they got, the more jobs that means. did i get it right? when people ask me why i am excited about the budget, it is $6 billion over the next five years that we otherwise would not get that says there should be a net gain in jobs. let me not fool anybody -- as i mentioned to somebody earlier, we are now formulating our plans. we're making some big changes. item they anybody can expect that we will have details and specifics all laid out overnight rate it will take as a little while. we will have to figure of how we draw down the constellation program in cooperation with our partners in congress. we have a lot of work to do. i am confident we can get there. when i look at the amount of money that president barack obama has put in the nasa budget, specifically for human space flight, you -- commercial and other things, technology development we did not have before, to me, with my simple brain, that translates to jobs. i cannot tell you whether it will be 1200 or 5000 or 1200 or 600. i do not have the granular t, yes. my little brain tells me that with more money, we have the potential to increase the number of jobs in our field of endeavor. let me thank you all for coming. the tough on us but be fair and honest. human space flight is something that is critical to president barack obama and this nation. our leadership is critical to our international partners. i have a representative from the chinese embassy in israel, to me last week when the chinese and we are not talking about other things and asked if we are still planning to come to china. i asked if we are sure that the invitation still stands. he said of course. we're talking about space and science. jc]while anything could happen, there is something that draws people of different cultures and different characters and everything together and space is one of those things. i have found that in traveling around the world, everybody wants to work with us. we intend to keep it that way. it is a good start today. keep your eye on us and see how we do and hold our feet to the fire. thank you very much. [applause] >> thank you very much for your attendance and corporations. as we say, this meeting is adjourned. host[captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2010] >> join our next three-hour conversation with paul johnson sunday at 9:00 eastern on book tv on c-span 2. cspan offers the new cspan classroom.org. we have redesigned the website to make it easier for teachers. we have videos for use in your classrooms. you can watch video clips organized by topics and the chance to connect with other cspan classroom teachers. it is all free. "washington journal" is next on c-span and we will take your calls. the house gavles in later on this morning. they will compete cyber-security research bill. does it 10:00 eastern.