Bill Nelson Bill Nelson Clarence William Nelson II (born September 29, 1942) is an American politician serving as the senior United States Senator from Florida, first elected to that seat in 2000. A member of the Democratic Party, he previously served in the Florida House of Representatives from 1972 to 1978 and in the United States House of Representatives from 1979 to 1991. In January 1986, he became the second sitting member of Congress to fly in space when he served as a payload specialist on the Space Shuttle "Columbia". Before entering politics he served in the U.S. Army Reserve in the
Space Shuttle retirement for space access systems in the 1970s also, such as the Rockwell "Star-raker" Star-raker was a large single-stage to orbit design that used both rockets and ramjet for propulision. It was a contemporary to the Boeing "Reusable Aerodynamic Space Vehicle", which an all-rocket propulsion single-stage to orbit design. For comparison to an earlier retirement, when the Saturn IB was last flown in 1975 for the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project, the Shuttle development program was already well underway. However, the Shuttle did not fly until 1981, which left a six-year gap in U.S. manned spaceflight. Because of this and other reasons, in