Texas 2019 - 86th Regular

Texas House Bill HR2210 Compare Versions

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Old	New		Differences
1		-	H.R. No. 2210
	1	+	86R37262 ST-D
	2	+	By: Price H.R. No. 2210
2	3
3	4
4	5		R E S O L U T I O N
5	6		WHEREAS, On July 20, 2019, people in Texas, across the
6	7		nation, and around the world will celebrate the 50th anniversary of
7	8		the historic Apollo 11 moon landing in 1969, and this occasion
8	9		provides a fitting opportunity to pay tribute to the creation of
9	10		NASA and to all 17 missions of the Apollo program; and
10	11		WHEREAS, Because our nation had fallen behind Europe in
11	12		aircraft technology by the start of World War I in 1914, Congress
12	13		created the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics in March
13	14		1915, and for the next four decades, NACA conducted aeronautical
14	15		research that directly influenced the successful growth of the
15	16		American aerospace industry; by the 1950s, NACA engineers were
16	17		already thinking about the technology necessary to send men into
17	18		space, including a worldwide tracking network, dual controls to
18	19		give pilots greater autonomy over their craft, and heat shields for
19	20		reentry into the atmosphere; and
20	21		WHEREAS, Despite these efforts, the Soviet Union was first
21	22		into space, launching the Sputnik satellite in 1957; in response,
22	23		our nation built on the earlier work of NACA and created the
23	24		National Aeronautics and Space Administration, which opened for
24	25		business on October 1, 1958; NASA scrambled to quickly get the
25	26		U.S. space program up to speed, and the urgency of the situation was
26	27		made clear on April 12, 1961, when a Soviet astronaut became both
27	28		the first man in space and the first man to orbit the Earth; less
28	29		than a month later, Alan Shepard became the first American in space
29	30		during a short suborbital flight on May 5, 1961; and
30	31		WHEREAS, With the U.S. under tremendous pressure to catch and
31	32		overtake the Soviet Union in the "space race," President John
32	33		F. Kennedy sought a boldly ambitious project; he addressed a
33	34		special joint session of Congress on May 25, 1961, declaring that
34	35		"this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before
35	36		this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him
36	37		safely to Earth"; and
37	38		WHEREAS, President Kennedy expanded on this declaration in a
38	39		famous speech at Rice University in Houston on September 12, 1962,
39	40		when he stated, "this State of Texas, this country of the United
40	41		States was not built by those who waited and rested and wished to
41	42		look behind them. This country was conquered by those who moved
42	43		forward--and so will space. . . . But why, some say, the moon? Why
43	44		choose this as our goal? And they may well ask why climb the highest
44	45		mountain? Why, 35 years ago, fly the Atlantic? Why does Rice play
45	46		Texas? We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in
46	47		this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but
47	48		because they are hard"; and
48	49		WHEREAS, Building on the success of NASA's first two manned
49	50		spaceflight programs, Mercury and Gemini, the scientists,
50	51		engineers, and technicians of the Apollo program began to develop
51	52		and build the necessary technology to carry out the lunar mission
52	53		and to train the brave astronauts who would make the journey; much
53	54		of the training was based at what is now the Johnson Space Center in
54	55		Houston, which was also the home of the NASA mission control center;
55	56		and
56	57		WHEREAS, The dangers inherent in spaceflight were lost on no
57	58		one, and they became all the more apparent when the first scheduled
58	59		manned mission, Apollo 1, ended in tragedy; astronauts Virgil "Gus"
59	60		Grissom, Edward White, and Roger Chaffee were killed in a fire
60	61		during a training simulation on the launch pad on January 27, 1967;
61	62		the disaster caused NASA to reevaluate all aspects of the
62	63		spacecraft and the program, but the Apollo administrators,
63	64		technicians, and astronauts quickly rallied; between October 1968
64	65		and May 1969, four manned missions were successfully completed to
65	66		conduct various trial runs in space, and the flight of Apollo 8
66	67		during Christmas 1968 became the first manned flight to orbit the
67	68		moon and return to Earth; and
68	69		WHEREAS, On July 16, 1969, the astronauts Neil Armstrong,
69	70		Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins of Apollo 11 lifted off from the
70	71		Kennedy Space Center aboard a Saturn V rocket; after traveling
71	72		240,000 miles through space, the conjoined Apollo command module
72	73		and the lunar lander, dubbed "the Eagle," went into orbit around the
73	74		moon on July 19; the following day, Armstrong and Aldrin left
74	75		Collins behind in the command module, entered the lander, and
75	76		descended toward the lunar surface; with only 30 seconds of fuel
76	77		remaining, Armstrong set the spacecraft down on the Sea of
77	78		Tranquility and coolly radioed the astronauts' status to mission
78	79		control: "Houston, Tranquility Base here, the Eagle has landed";
79	80		and
80	81		WHEREAS, Six and a half hours later, as a television camera
81	82		beamed his image back to hundreds of millions of viewers on Earth,
82	83		Neil Armstrong became the first human being to set foot on the moon,
83	84		making his famous pronouncement, "That's one small step for man,
84	85		one giant leap for mankind"; Aldrin followed a few minutes later,
85	86		and together the two astronauts spent two and a half hours on the
86	87		lunar surface, taking photographs, collecting samples, and
87	88		planting an American flag; the following day, they returned to
88	89		their colleague in the command module, and on July 24, the three men
89	90		returned safely to Earth; and
90	91		WHEREAS, Following the triumph of the first lunar landing,
91	92		Americans returned to the moon six more times; one of the missions,
92	93		Apollo 13, became known as a "successful failure" when, after an
93	94		explosion on board crippled the command module, the ingenious
94	95		improvisation of engineers on the ground and the bravery and
95	96		determination of the crew allowed the astronauts to return safely
96	97		to Earth; in all, the United States landed 12 men on the moon
97	98		between the flights of Apollo 11 in July 1969 and Apollo 17 in
98	99		December 1972; nearly 60 years after President Kennedy's address to
99	100		Congress, the Russians have yet to land a single cosmonaut on the
100	101		moon; and
101	102		WHEREAS, Between October 2018 and December 2022, NASA is
102	103		marking the 50th anniversaries of the Apollo flights, and the
103	104		official logo of these milestone anniversaries depicts the arc of
104	105		Earth's horizon striking through the word Apollo against a star
105	106		field that recalls the collective effort of the 400,000 people who
106	107		worked on the program; three central stars symbolize the sacrifice
107	108		of the Apollo 1 astronauts, Grissom, White, and Chaffee; behind the
108	109		star field is a blue nebula that stands for NASA's bold plans for
109	110		the next half century of American space exploration, including a
110	111		return to the moon and manned missions to Mars; and
111	112		WHEREAS, The 17 missions of the Apollo program represent one
112	113		of the greatest scientific and engineering feats in history, and
113	114		they remain a testament to human imagination and ingenuity and to
114	115		the pioneering spirit of a great nation; now, therefore, be it
115	116		RESOLVED, That the House of Representatives of the 86th Texas
116	117		Legislature hereby commemorate the 17 missions of the Apollo
117	118		program on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the first moon
118	119		landing in July 2019.
119		-	Price
120		-	______________________________
121		-	Speaker of the House
122		-	I certify that H.R. No. 2210 was adopted by the House on May
123		-	27, 2019, by a non-record vote.
124		-	______________________________
125		-	Chief Clerk of the House