NASA Administrator Charles Bolden spoke Friday before a packed house at the University of Colorado, lauding the school’s aerospace program and delivering an animated primer on what he hopes space travel will look like in the near future.
“From a human standpoint, it’s in our DNA. We have to explore,” he told the audience of more than 400 at Folsom Field’s Stadium Club. “You live out here in Colorado today because there were people that lived on the East Coast of the United States, and they got restless.”
Bolden, who became NASA’s 12th administrator in 2009, has presided over the agency’s transition from three decades of shuttle missions to a new era focused more on technology and the development of the international space station, which he called the “springboard to the exploration of deep space.”
As of March 25, Boulder alum Steve Swanson is stationed on the space station, and he’ll become its commander in September. Bolden suggested that, once Swanson assumes the role, CU hold a celebration in his honor.
“Getting something off this planet is really hard, and to know that you have students at CU who really dedicated themselves to doing this is great,” he said.
Bolden said he hopes NASA will resume launching astronauts from U.S. soil by 2017, with the added goal of sending a crew to Mars by the 2030s.
The Curiosity rover now used for research on Mars, he said, is only helpful to a certain extent.
“History has told us that if you really want to know details about things, it’s really good to have a human go,” Bolden said. “We can program a robot to go pick up rocks. What we can’t do is what we did in the Apollo era.”
He also spoke to the possibility of humans actually exploring residence outside of Earth.
“I’m a firm believer that any species that wants to exist for long periods of time has to be a multi-planet species,” Bolden said.
Throughout his talk, Bolden heaped praise on CU’s rich history with NASA, calling the university a “pipeline for talent.”
Including Swanson, the school has sent 20 people into space and receives more NASA funding than any other public university in the country, with nearly $500 million in sponsored research awards from the agency since 2004.
Additionally, CU’s Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics is closely involved with several NASA missions, including spacecraft now en route to Mars, Jupiter and Pluto, plus a $32 million instrument package designed to help scientists better understand weather in space.
On Friday morning, Bolden visited the lab for the first time.
“I was impressed at LASP just by the amount and quality of facilities to which undergraduate students have access,” he said. “I haven’t been to a lot of college campuses where students have access to that kind of equipment.”
Bolden also spent time browsing the CU aerospace engineering department’s student project symposium.
“This is really exciting to us because we can explain our whole project and have him ask questions,” said CU senior Lea Harris, whose team built a rover designed to climb vertical, rocky walls. “He can talk to us about how to make it better, and how to use it in application.”
Former astronaut Joe Tanner, now a senior instructor of aerospace engineering at CU, called Bolden’s visit a “great honor” for the seniors and graduate students presenting at Friday’s symposium.
“The head guy at NASA cares enough to come and see what they’ve done,” he said. “That’s pretty cool.”
Bolden said he wasn’t surprised by the quality of the projects he saw Friday.
“With the faculty and all these industry leaders like Ball Aerospace, the students here can’t help but be drawn into the space field by their location,” he said. “They’re pretty focused and intense, and that’s always exciting.”
Contact Camera Staff Writer Alex Burness at 303-473-1389 or burnessa@dailycamera.com.
