This is the speech that I would give to Congress if ever I were to address them. :)

Members of Congress,

In in the course of a generation, there are moments that we all remember. Moments where everyone in the nation remembers exactly where they were, and what they were doing. What kinds of moments were these? The day the towers fell. The day John F. Kennedy was shot. Pearl Harbor. If you notice, most of these events are bad things. Everyone remembers precisely where they were because we were collectively horrified: filled with uncertainty about the future, horrified by the capacity of mankind for evil.

But there is another event that is collectively remembered by the members of a generation: the Moon landing, on July 24, 1969, of Apollo 11... an event remembered not only throughout the nation, but throughout the entire world. This is one of the only events in living memory when everyone in the world remembers what they were doing because they were electrified-- filled with wonder about the future, and electrified by the capacity of mankind for good! This moment is a moment that will be famous not just in a generation, but in a hundred generations-- in a thousand generations. It is a first unlike any other-- the first time humans went beyond our home planet and walked on the face of another world.

Since 1969, the consistent value of NASA, beyond satellites, beyond velcro and teflon, beyond LASIK and memory foam, is the consistent delivery of good news, the consistent delivery of wonder at God's creation, and consistent inspiration at the our increasing ability to grasp it, to explore it, and to reach it. I live in Los Angeles, and they've started launching more rockets from the Vandenburg Air Force Base. That's something that gets your attention! How extraordinary to live in a place where you can look up from your bedroom window and see a rocket launching into space! Every day, our constellation of missions beams down scientific data from the edge of the Sun to the edge of Interstellar Space! Every day, American innovation is illuminating the darkest corners of the Universe with the light of human knowledge!

As members of Congress, you have many things competing for your attention. There are mouths to feed, there are roads to build, there are alliances to defend. These are all important. So important, in fact, that I would say that 95% percent of all of our funds should be dedicated to them. 95% percent of our funds: dedicated to the here and now, to the near future, to the world's ever-pressing problems of hunger, and sickness, and disease.

But suppose that we spent 5% of these funds on the future... the far future. Suppose we spent 5% of these funds on something that will be remembered not only by a generation, but by a thousand generations.

When I ask you, Members of Congress, for the money to fund NASA's Mission to Mars, I am asking you to fund a moment that will reverberate through a thousand generations.

I hope you will consider our proposal.

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