Gazing at the audience of well-dressed men and women, Gordon felt as though he were staring at an alien culture. What was wrong with these politicians? How could they be so shortsighted?
It bewildered him that they did not share his most passionate belief. What sets the human race apart from the beasts is man's hunger for knowledge. Every child asks the universal question, Why? They are programmed from birth to be curious, to be explorers, to seek scientific truths.
Yet these elected officials had lost the curiosity that makes man unique. They'd come to Houston not to ask why, but why should we?
It was Cornell's idea to woo them with what he cynically called "the Tom Hanks tour," a reference to the movie Apollo 13, which still ranked as the best PR NASA had ever known. Cornell had already presented the latest achievements aboard the orbiting International Space Station.
He'd let them shake the hands of some real live astronauts. Wasn't that what everyone wanted? To touch golden boy, a hero? Next there'd be a tour of Johnson Space Center, starting with Building 30 and the Flight Control Room. All that gleaming technology would surely dazzle them and make them true believers.
But it isn't working, thought Gordon in dismay. These politicians aren't buying it.
NASA faced powerful opponents, starting with Senator Phil Parish, sitting in the front row. Seventy-six years old, an uncompromising hawk from South Carolina, Parish's first priority preserving the defense budget, NASA be damned. Now he hauled his three-hundred-pound frame out of his seat and stood up to address Cornell in a gentleman's drawl.