Air Force One Press Briefing by Scott McClellan, John Marburger, and Claude Allen (NASA Excerpts)
Press Gaggle by Scott McClellan, John Marburger, Director of Office of Science & Technology Policy and Claude Allen, Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy
Aboard Air Force One
[Excerpts]
Q Scott, the President’s moon/Mars mission, plan — I mean, what’s going to come of that? There’s a lot of concern about the gap when the shuttle is retired and the new vehicle hasn’t come into play yet.
DR. MARBURGER: There’s lots of other science that’s important, and there are lots of other initiatives in other agencies that are important for our country. This initiative focuses on things that we think have especially high leverage for future innovation. And that’s what this is focused on. Space exploration is another issue, it’s another important area for the country, but it’s not part of this initiative.
Q Does this indicate any shifting of priorities away from that as a top priority?
DR. MARBURGER: No, there’s no shift of priorities for the other areas.
CLAUDE ALLEN: And then the last piece of this program that we’re focused on in education is to have a survey to look at all the federal programs, all the federal dollars that are going into education right now for math and science, to make sure that they also are tied to the No Child Left Behind standards so that we make sure that agencies such as NASA, that expends more than the Department of Education in math-science, that they, too, are tying their programs to that which the students can achieve, as well.
