Republican Presidential Candidate Giuliani Voices Support For Kennedy Space Center

GOP Presidential candidate Rudolph Giuliani visited the Space Caost last Friday as he continues the campaign leading up to the state's Jan. 29 primary. He toured Kennedy Space Center, where he remarked, after seeing the space shuttle Atlantis on the launch pad, "It's remarkable to see it up close. The space program is one of America's remarkable achievements."

See Florida Today's report here: http://www.floridatoday.com/floridatoday/blogs/spaceteam/

The most important thing to come out of Giuliani's visit was his statements in support of providing the necessary support to NASA to minimize the gap between the retirement of the space shuttle and manned operational flights of Orion. During a projected 5-year gap, the U.S. will be dependent upon the Russians for supplying the International Space Station with supplies and crew transport using the Progress and Soyuz spacecraft.

Following a meeting with space industry leaders, who warned of serious consequences of "The Gap", Giuliani stressed his desire to minimize the the U.S. manned spaceflight downtime. "This is not acceptable," said Giuliani. "America should be No. 1 and shouldn't have to be dependent on other countries... Our goal is, let's make sure we close this gap."

Hopefully, his words won't be like those of so many politicians running for office: empty and quickly forgotten once power is gained. Rudy Giuliani is perhaps the most concered candidate regarding U.S. supremacy, especially in areas of national security and "high ground," so I'm cautiously optimistic his words can survive the remainder of the campaign.

It's interesting to note that of all the candidates who have the most realistic chances of becoming the next U.S. President, Sen. Hillary Clinton, Sen. Barak Obama, Senc John McCain, Gov. Mitt Romney and Hon. Rudolph Giuliani, have expressed the strongest verbal support for continuing development of Orion and minimizing the transition time between shuttle and Constellation, although promises and plans are woefully lacking.

Let's hope they don't forget. But... I'm not going to take bets on it.