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Exploration, Of Course, Is Going To New Places, But I Don't Think We Go To New Places Just Solely To Say: "well, We've Been There," And Come Back, Interesting Though It May Be. To Me, Each Time We Go Farther Into Space We Should Use That To Do Basic Research - Basic Research That Can't Be Done Before You Go There.

-John Glenn

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Exploration, Of Course, Is

John Glenn

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Exploration, Of Course, Is Going To New Places, But I Don't Think We Go To New Places Just Solely To Say: "well, We've Been There," And Come Back, Interesting Though It May Be. To Me, Each Time We Go Farther Into Space We Should Use That To Do Basic Research - Basic Research That Can't Be Done Before You Go There.

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I Think In America We Have To Get Back To Being The Best Educated General Citizenry In The World And Make Sure We Do Not Lose Our Lead In Research, If We're To Have A Leadership Position In The World.

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We Used To Joke About Canned Men, Putting People In A Can And Seeing How Far You Can Send Them And Bring Them Back. That's Not The Purpose Of This Program... Space Is A Laboratory, And We Go Into It To Work And Learn The New.

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A Lot Of People Ask...why A Man Is Willing To Risk... Well, We've Got To Do It. We're Going Into An Age Of Exploration That Will Be Bigger Than Anything The World Has Ever Seen... If A Man Faces Up To The (unknown) And Takes The Dare Of The Future, He Can Have Some Control Over His Destiny.

America Is In A Newly Competitive Position Around The World, And Unless We Keep Our Lead In Education For All Of Our People And Do The Research Along With That, Other Nations Will Start Outdoing Us And They Will Be Leaders In The World.

I Think That It's Good For Us To Be Able To Travel In Space And Do Research In Space, And I Emphasize The Research, Because Space Travel To Me Is Far More Than Just Seeing How Far We Can Go.

We're Going To Go To The Moon. We're Going To Go On To Mars. We're Going To Set Up A Base On The Moon. Ok, But No Money To Pay For It, Nothing In The Budget For It. And So The Decision Made At That Time Was To Cancel The Whole Shuttle Program To Save Money, Which I Think Was Very, Very Short Sighted.

To Get Your Name Well Enough Known That You Can Run For A Public Office, Some People Do It By Being Great Lawyers Or Philanthropists Or Business People Or Work Their Way Up The Political Ladder. I Happened To Become Known From A Different Route.

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