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	<title> - DEPARTMENTS OF VETERANS AFFAIRS AND HOUSING AND URBAN DEVELOPMENT, AND INDEPENDENT AGENCIES APPROPRIATIONS FOR 1998</title>
	<body><pre>
	[House Hearing, 105 Congress]
	[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]


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	DEPARTMENTS OF VETERANS AFFAIRS AND
	HOUSING AND URBAN DEVELOPMENT, AND
	INDEPENDENT AGENCIES APPROPRIATIONS
	FOR 1998

	========================================================================

	HEARINGS

	BEFORE A

	SUBCOMMITTEE OF THE

	COMMITTEE ON APPROPRIATIONS

	HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

	ONE HUNDRED FIFTH CONGRESS

	FIRST SESSION

	________

	SUBCOMMITTEE ON VA, HUD, AND INDEPENDENT AGENCIES

	JERRY LEWIS, California, Chairman

	TOM DeLAY, Texas LOUIS STOKES, Ohio
	JAMES T. WALSH, New York ALAN B. MOLLOHAN, West Virginia
	DAVID L. HOBSON, Ohio MARCY KAPTUR, Ohio
	JOE KNOLLENBERG, Michigan CARRIE P. MEEK, Florida
	RODNEY P. FRELINGHUYSEN, New Jersey DAVID E. PRICE, North Carolina
	MARK W. NEUMANN, Wisconsin
	ROGER F. WICKER, Mississippi

	NOTE: Under Committee Rules, Mr. Livingston, as Chairman of the Full
	Committee, and Mr. Obey, as Ranking Minority Member of the Full
	Committee, are authorized to sit as Members of all Subcommittees.

	Frank M. Cushing, Paul E. Thomson, Timothy L. Peterson, and Valerie
	L. Baldwin, Staff Assistants
	________

	PART 1

	NATIONAL AERONAUTICS AND SPACE ADMINISTRATION

	<snowflake>

	________

	Printed for the use of the Committee on Appropriations
	________

	U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE

	40-219 O WASHINGTON : 1997

	------------------------------------------------------------------------

	For sale by the U.S. Government Printing Office
	Superintendent of Documents, Congressional Sales Office,
	Washington, DC 20402







	COMMITTEE ON APPROPRIATIONS

	BOB LIVINGSTON, Louisiana, Chairman

	JOSEPH M. McDADE, Pennsylvania DAVID R. OBEY, Wisconsin
	C. W. BILL YOUNG, Florida SIDNEY R. YATES, Illinois
	RALPH REGULA, Ohio LOUIS STOKES, Ohio
	JERRY LEWIS, California JOHN P. MURTHA, Pennsylvania
	JOHN EDWARD PORTER, Illinois NORMAN D. DICKS, Washington
	HAROLD ROGERS, Kentucky MARTIN OLAV SABO, Minnesota
	JOE SKEEN, New Mexico JULIAN C. DIXON, California
	FRANK R. WOLF, Virginia VIC FAZIO, California
	TOM DeLAY, Texas W. G. (BILL) HEFNER, North Carolina
	JIM KOLBE, Arizona STENY H. HOYER, Maryland
	RON PACKARD, California ALAN B. MOLLOHAN, West Virginia
	SONNY CALLAHAN, Alabama MARCY KAPTUR, Ohio
	JAMES T. WALSH, New York DAVID E. SKAGGS, Colorado
	CHARLES H. TAYLOR, North Carolina NANCY PELOSI, California
	DAVID L. HOBSON, Ohio PETER J. VISCLOSKY, Indiana
	ERNEST J. ISTOOK, Jr., Oklahoma THOMAS M. FOGLIETTA, Pennsylvania
	HENRY BONILLA, Texas ESTEBAN EDWARD TORRES, California
	JOE KNOLLENBERG, Michigan NITA M. LOWEY, New York
	DAN MILLER, Florida JOSE E. SERRANO, New York
	JAY DICKEY, Arkansas ROSA L. DeLAURO, Connecticut
	JACK KINGSTON, Georgia JAMES P. MORAN, Virginia
	MIKE PARKER, Mississippi JOHN W. OLVER, Massachusetts
	RODNEY P. FRELINGHUYSEN, New Jersey ED PASTOR, Arizona
	ROGER F. WICKER, Mississippi CARRIE P. MEEK, Florida
	MICHAEL P. FORBES, New York DAVID E. PRICE, North Carolina
	GEORGE R. NETHERCUTT, Jr., Washington CHET EDWARDS, Texas
	MARK W. NEUMANN, Wisconsin
	RANDY ``DUKE'' CUNNINGHAM, California
	TODD TIAHRT, Kansas
	ZACH WAMP, Tennessee
	TOM LATHAM, Iowa
	ANNE M. NORTHUP, Kentucky
	ROBERT B. ADERHOLT, Alabama

	James W. Dyer, Clerk and Staff Director





	DEPARTMENTS OF VETERANS AFFAIRS AND HOUSING AND URBAN DEVELOPMENT, AND
	INDEPENDENT AGENCIES APPROPRIATIONS FOR 1998

	----------

	Wednesday, February 26, 1997.

	NATIONAL SPACE AND AERONAUTICS ADMINISTRATION

	WITNESS

	DANIEL S. GOLDIN, ADMINISTRATOR

	Chairman's Opening Remarks

	Mr. Lewis. Welcome, ladies and gentlemen. This morning it
	is my pleasure to welcome Mr. Dan Goldin, Administrator of the
	National Space and Aeronautics Administration, to the
	committee's hearings for the fiscal year 1998 budget request of
	$13.5 billion.
	The committee has a number of concerns with the programs
	included in the budget request. The primary concern is the
	status of the International Space Station. Over the past year,
	the Russian Government has made a number of promises to the
	Space Station partners, and it appears that most of those
	promises have been broken.
	Today we find ourselves 9 months from launch of the first
	element of the Space Station, yet we have no firm plan to
	ensure that critical follow-on elements will be delivered in
	time to make the station a viable project.
	I traveled to Russia, you may recall, Mr. Administrator,
	with Mr. Sensenbrenner in January of 1996, over a year ago,
	where we conveyed to the Russians our concerns about their lack
	of progress on the service module. My message was simple and
	rather succinct: A deal is a deal. And the Russians, it would
	appear, are not living up to their part of the bargain.
	Last week Mr. Sensenbrenner returned to Moscow and found
	the situation to be no different than a year ago. I am
	concerned that the current situation in Russia will cause an
	erosion of support for the program in this country and result
	in serious problems when we take this appropriations bill to
	the House floor probably sometime in June. We do not have the
	luxury of a lot of time, so we need to know very soon how the
	problems are going to be resolved. We look forward to hearing
	your recommendations today.
	Mr. Goldin, let me say that you and I have had not just a
	very positive working relationship; we have had a number of
	discussions that, while not off the record or closed,
	nonetheless were personal sessions. And so I have heard a good
	deal of the work that you went about dealing with, especially
	the Russian problem. But this meeting is for the public record.
	We will begin to build a pattern of public understanding of
	where we are and what the contingencies are that are available
	to us.
	So we look forward to your statement for the record. All of
	it will be included, of course, and from there I expect we will
	have a lively exchange. Welcome.

	Administrator Goldin's Opening Remarks

	Mr. Goldin. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am very pleased to
	have the opportunity to appear before you this morning.
	I want to start out by noting where we were last year in
	the budget process. As you remember, there was great concern
	about the outyear budget estimates.
	The President said then that the outyear figures were not
	set in stone, and I told you we hoped to do better. I am happy
	to report that we have. The President's fiscal year 1998 budget
	request of $13.5 billion and the funding plan for the outyears
	will give America a robust space and aeronautics program.
	Some people will tell you NASA needs more to have a strong
	program. I am not one of them.
	The President has shown enormous confidence in us, and I am
	very proud of that. He has given us a meaningful budget, and he
	has shown us he thinks we can do more for less. He is right. We
	can, and we will, and we are.
	In 5 years, we have turned an average program cost growth
	of 77 percent to underruns of 6 percent. We have cut the number
	of civil service employees by 5,000 since 1993. We have cut the
	spacecraft cost from an average of $590 million in the early
	1990s to $190 million today. We cut the shuttle operating costs
	while increasing safety. I could give you hundreds of examples.
	We are using our budget reductions to become smarter and
	more efficient. We support you in your task of cutting the
	Federal deficit. We are proud of what we have done to cut the
	Federal deficit. We are stepping into the new era of smaller
	government.
	We are also remaining true to what America wants and needs
	from its space and aeronautics program. We are taking risks. We
	are doing the hard things, the uncomfortable things that
	stretch us as an agency and a country.
	I want to tell you a story of our recent Hubble Space
	Telescope----
	Mr. Lewis. I wonder if we could just interrupt your
	statement right there. We kind of summarized at the beginning,
	and I am sorry to do this to you, Dan, but in my excitement
	earlier in wishing my colleague Lou Stokes a happy birthday,
	which was on Sunday, I was so involved with that I neglected to
	even say hello to him here formally for the record. And he may
	very well have a statement for the record, too.
	Lou, welcome, and happy birthday.
	Mr. Stokes. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. It is a
	pleasure to be back with you and all the other members of our
	subcommittee.
	I do have an opening statement. Thank you.
	Mr. Lewis. I apologize.

	Ranking Minority Member Opening Remarks

	Mr. Stokes. Sure. Thank you.
	Mr. Chairman, as we start the fiscal year 1998 hearing
	process, I want to join with you in welcoming the
	Administrator, Mr. Goldin, and his supporting team from NASA.
	We look forward to working with you as we move through what
	will undoubtedly be another very difficult budget year.
	I also want to extend a very special welcome to two new
	members on our side, neither of whom are here yet because they
	are both in other subcommittees. But as you know, we have Mrs.
	Carrie Meek of Florida and Mr. David Price of North Carolina,
	both of whom were formerly members of the appropriations full
	committee, but they are new to this subcommittee. And we will
	appropriately welcome them when they are able to join us this
	morning.
	Mr. Administrator, you have been widely quoted indicating
	you are generally pleased with NASA's budget for fiscal year
	1998 and especially for the succeeding 3 or 4 years. This is
	understandable. When compared with the projections of last
	year, NASA fared much better than had been estimated. However,
	there are no guarantees that NASA will receive the amounts
	contained in the 1998 budget or projected for the outyears.
	Already, the Congressional Budget Office has determined that,
	based on its analysis, the President's budget will not result
	in a budget surplus of $17 billion in 2002 but, rather, a
	deficit of approximately $50 billion. In addition, there are
	several user fees and other proposals in the administration's
	budget, both for 1998 and the outyears, that based on prior
	experience are unlikely to be agreed upon by the Congress.
	In addition, primarily due to tremendous increases for the
	Department of Housing and Urban Development Section 8 contract
	renewal effort, the total discretionary budget authority
	request before the VA-HUD Subcommittee this year is $7.5
	billion higher than last year. Unless special adjustments are
	made to the budget resolution and in the Section 602(b)
	allocation for this subcommittee, such an increase seems
	unlikely. The subcommittee will then be forced either to
	terminate hundreds of thousands of Section 8 contracts with the
	attendant eviction of tenants or spread the pain around to
	other agencies funded in this bill.
	I do not make these comments in an adversarial or
	confrontational manner, but just as an observation of some of
	the difficulties that we face this year. Today marks the start
	of what will probably be a long and arduous task for this
	subcommittee to craft a bill that can garner sufficient votes
	for passage in both Houses and be acceptable to the
	administration.
	We have many issues to discuss in the next two days, and I
	look forward to a forthright and open dialogue as we proceed.
	And I notice now that Mr. David Price of North Carolina, whom I
	had mentioned earlier, Mr. Chairman, has now joined us, and we
	want to extend to you, David, a very warm welcome to this
	subcommittee. As I mentioned earlier, you are a former member
	of the Appropriations Committee and a very valued member of our
	committee. We are happy to have you join us.
	Mr. Price. Thank you very much. I am very happy to be here.
	Mr. Stokes. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
	Mr. Lewis. Thank you, Louis.
	Now, Mr. Goldin, back to that story.

	Administrator Goldin's Opening Remarks

	Mr. Goldin. Okay. We are taking risks. We are doing the
	hard things, the uncomfortable things that stretch us as an
	agency and a country. And now let me tell you the story of our
	recent Hubble Telescope mission because it says a lot about
	what NASA is about today.
	Before the mission, there was a hue and cry from some
	quarters. Why mess with something that isn't broken? Why take
	the risk?
	In fact, and I quote, someone said, ``If it ain't broke,
	don't fix it,'' to which I say, first, that's bad English and,
	secondly, that is bad thinking.
	We took the risk because of the incredible possibilities it
	might open up. We took it because of what we might discover and
	what the world might gain. Our ground crew and astronauts were
	superb. They were magnificent. With surgical precision they
	fitted the Hubble with state-of-the-art technology that will
	extend the human gaze even deeper into the universe.
	They also used parachute cords, alligator clips, thermal
	blankets, and remarkable ingenuity to repair torn insulation
	they had not expected.
	We will not know how successful the mission was in terms of
	the science for a few weeks, but at NASA, we considered it a
	success before our crew ever left the ground.
	Before we launched, I called the crew to say how proud I
	was of them. They had trained hard. They had gone through all
	their paces and mastered each step.
	The astronauts and our people on the ground did everything
	they could to get ready, and they did it with great discipline
	and courage. They accepted risks. They were confident of
	success but prepared for failure. It comes with the territory
	at NASA.
	When you attempt something bold, when you attempt something
	amazing, you might fail. You just keep trying.
	You know the outcome of the mission: five beautiful space
	walks, a new, improved Hubble, the hope of fascinating new
	glimmers in the cosmos.
	I might point out, Mr. Stokes, we are prepared to work with
	you and this committee. NASA has never stepped away from a
	tough situation, and there were a number of years when the
	President and the Congress asked for budget cuts. The space
	community wanted more money, and I agreed to go for less. We
	will do what is right. If I believe a safety implication is
	involved, if I believe it will hurt basic science for the
	future of this country, I will so tell you. But I want you to
	know we are prepared to wrestle with you. We cannot go to the
	polls and ask for a balanced budget--we cannot go to the polls
	and ask for hope for all our people--without working together.
	We are committed to working with you, Mr. Stokes.
	I want to thank this committee who helped make all this
	possible, and I want to close by thanking you, Mr. Chairman,
	for your support. The Congress, led by this committee, gave us
	the stability we asked for in fiscal year 1997. You have
	remained committed to a space and aeronautics program worthy of
	the greatest space-faring Nation in the world. And you have
	done it during some very difficult times.
	We appreciate your support, and we will assure you that we
	will continue to do our best to deserve the confidence that
	this committee and the President have placed in us.

	service module schedule

	Mr. Lewis. Thank you, Mr. Goldin.
	For members of the committee, we will attempt to stay as
	close as we possibly can to the 5-minute rule so that all
	members have a chance to participate, and with that, I will
	proceed with questioning.
	The Russian Government is responsible for construction and
	financing of the third element of the Space Station, the
	service module. Mr. Goldin, what is the current schedule for
	completion of the service module, and will that scheduled
	completion date support the first two elements which are
	scheduled for launch in November and December of this year?
	Mr. Goldin. I will tell you what I know. I cannot tell you
	the final details. I think we are some weeks away from that.
	The Russian Government told us that they would be ready to
	launch it in December of 1998. They are going to attempt to see
	if they could pull that schedule up.
	I am not heartened by the visit that Mr. Sensenbrenner and
	his other committee members made to Russia. We are preparing to
	send an investigative team to Russia the second week of March.
	I am planning at this time on being in Russia approximately the
	first week in April. We will sit and understand, because at
	this point in time promises no longer count. It is actions that
	count. And a partnership means a partnership. People have to do
	what they say they are going to do.
	While I am very sensitive to the issues in Russia, I have
	the responsibility of making sure we build the Space Station.
	So I will get the information to you as I have it.
	It is my assessment we will not see the service module
	before December of 1998, and perhaps even later. Towards that
	end, we are preparing contingency plans in this country, and we
	are looking at a variety of approaches. We are not done with
	it. But I believe by the end of the month, and then after I
	take my trip to Russia, I will be able to be much more
	specific.

	contingency plan

	Mr. Lewis. Mr. Director, this last week one of our
	astronauts, Franklin Chang-Diaz, was in my district, and we
	spent a good deal of time together. One piece of that--by the
	way, a very, very outstanding reflection of the people we have
	aboard in NASA. But one of those discussions took us to
	contingencies. He essentially was saying that he was pleased
	that the agency had gone forward with contingencies in view of
	some of the obvious difficulties that most who pay any
	attention know about.
	Nonetheless, our visit was over a year ago. We have been
	talking about contingencies, and it is very clear that we are
	having great difficulty having the Russians commit to a
	specific line. So would you describe for us--you have described
	for me in other discussions a line in the sand. Would you
	describe for us where the line is and what some of those major
	contingency alternatives are?
	Mr. Goldin. Yes, I would be pleased to do that.
	We cannot have thousands of people all over the country
	waiting to hear from Russia every week as to whether or not
	they get the financing. So it is our intention at this time to
	make a very hard decision based on the best information we have
	during the month of March and to validate that the first week
	in April, and then we will be able to come forward with a very
	specific plan which we will clear with the White House and the
	Congress and our international partners. We cannot take
	unilateral action. We must work together.
	Let me tell you the aspects of this contingency plan, and
	many elements are already in place. For example, if we do not
	have a service module that meets habitability capability in our
	laboratory, we have already built that into the program. We
	have a variety of other contingency activities we have already
	built into the program. Right now our problem is the service
	module handles orbit raising and altitude control, which is
	crucial for the functioning of this system.
	We had talked to the Russians about an FGB-II module, but
	that will be too expensive and, we feel, also disruptive to the
	Russians building the service module. They do not have enough
	people. So we are dropping that option. No final decision, but
	we believe we will drop that option.
	What we are looking at now is just making minor
	modifications to the unit we already own, the FGB-I. We paid
	for it. We own it. And with minor modification, we believe we
	could handle the Space Station through Flight 7A. That gives us
	tremendous flexibility. We think that that should cost tens of
	millions of dollars, not hundreds of millions of dollars. Keep
	in mind we also are remaining very frugal. We could have solved
	this problem a year or two ago and have committed three-
	quarters of a billion dollars, and we count nickels and
	pennies, and we are not prepared to do it. So that is one of
	the approaches we are looking at.
	We also believe we need an approach in America, so we are
	working with the Naval Research Laboratory, and the Naval
	Research Laboratory has another alternative, which is called
	the interim control module, based on an existing system that
	they believe they could get up in orbit by October of 1998. So
	we are exploring that possibility, too.
	In addition, we are looking at a longer-term solution which
	is called a propulsion module, which would be built either by
	the Naval Research Laboratory or NASA Marshall or a combination
	of the two. Those are the series of things we are looking at.
	Finally, given that money is a very crucial aspect of all
	deliberations, we want to get one final understanding on
	whether or not the Russians are going to deliver, because if
	they do deliver, it could help us avoid spending money. This is
	why I feel it is necessary to provide the full set of options
	to you. Some options hold the schedule, and I want to also talk
	about first element launch schedule.
	There are some who would say, well, let's launch the first
	element because we are ready. I feel we should not do such a
	thing. We should only launch if there is a reason for launch.
	To launch something into space to meet an arbitrary schedule
	date and then have it sit in space for 6 to 9 months makes no
	sense. So I have asked our people to take a look at the
	advantages and the disadvantages of holding first element
	launch.
	The most important thing to me is holding the end date and
	not letting the end date slip too much. The end date, if it
	slips too much, results in costs. So those are the trades that
	we are looking at. Those are the options that we are looking
	at.

	launch schedule

	Mr. Lewis. As I listened to those last remarks, it sounds
	to me like slipping is an awful lot bigger word than it was in
	our former discussions. But presuming the November, December
	schedule that was the original schedule that we were discussing
	with the Russians, presuming that we keep that schedule, how
	much funding would be required to meet that schedule?
	Mr. Goldin. The basic schedule?
	Mr. Lewis. The first two elements which were scheduled for
	November, December. How much money is required to keep that
	schedule?
	Mr. Goldin. We will live within our existing budget in the
	baseline program. Any funding outside of that we believe will
	fit within the total NASA funding request. If we take a look at
	the range of these options that I defined to you--the FGB-I,
	the interim control module, the propulsion module, that range
	of options goes from on the low end of some hundreds of
	millions to the high end of about $600 million. That would be
	the range.

	launch schedule allocations

	Mr. Lewis. As we look forward to that line, another line in
	the sand in April on your visit to Russia, I hope we might
	clarify for the record some of the pieces of that question that
	we would like to have in the record, that is, the actual dollar
	allocations to meet that schedule. Within the overall budget,
	there are some specifics that we would like to have.
	Mr. Goldin. I am sorry. I did not understand the question.
	Mr. Lewis. Very specifically, assuming we keep the launch
	schedule in November and December, how much funding will be
	required to meet that schedule?
	Mr. Goldin. If we hold the first element launch and we are
	able to deliver the interim control module--see, the problem I
	am having is there are permutations to that, and I do not know
	how to answer the question. There are various permutations, and
	that is what I am trying to understand. Maybe I do not
	understand question.
	Mr. Lewis. Well, I am looking primarily for Russian
	funding.
	Mr. Goldin. Oh, how much money would go to Russia? Is that
	the question? I am sorry. I did not understand.
	Mr. Lewis. They seem to do very well in programs where we
	deliver money to them.
	Mr. Goldin. Right. Okay. I am sorry. I did not understand
	the question.
	Now that we think we will be dropping the FGB-II option,
	the FGB-II option would have cost hundreds of millions of
	dollars, and that money would have gone to Russia. And that is
	what we had talked about in prior meetings.
	That decision is probably a week away. But given that we
	drop that option, the amount of money that might go to Russia
	for all these other options will be measured in tens of
	millions of dollars, and that would be to just take some
	American navigation equipment and install it in our FGB-I
	module. But we do not think it would be more than tens of
	millions of dollars. I am sorry. I did not understand the
	question.
	Mr. Lewis. To just follow up on that a bit, has any of the
	funding been released to the prime contractor and the
	subcontractors?
	Mr. Goldin. In Russia? Yes and no.
	Mr. Lewis. Okay.
	Mr. Goldin. We were very, very concerned about the funding
	situation in Russia relative to the service module. We have a
	contract with the Russians for Phase I of the Space Station
	program, which is the Shuttle/Mir missions, and Phase II, which
	takes the assembly through Flight 7A. Because we knew that
	there would be some gap between the time the Russians said they
	would do the funding and actually deliver on it, we did not
	want to lose any time to hold the service module. So we
	renegotiated the contract with the Russians to make $20 million
	available in the existing contract so that they could get money
	to their sub-tier suppliers who were on the critical path. The
	first release of that was about $11.4 million, if I remember
	correctly. Is that right?
	Mr. Trafton. $11.9 million.
	Mr. Goldin. Then there is another release of about $3 or 4
	million, and then another release of $3 or 4 million. We ask
	the Russians at release points to validate that they did the
	work that we said we would do.
	We are coming close to the next release point in March, and
	then there will be a third release point in April. That money
	will have to be replenished by the Russians for the Shuttle/Mir
	mission to continue in its last few flights. So, if you will,
	we did not take any new money from our contract with the
	Russians. We just reprogrammed the money within the existing
	contract to hold the program on schedule.
	Other than that, there have been no other funds allocated,
	and we will not release any funds before communicating with
	this committee and the Congress.
	Mr. Lewis. Mr. Goldin, I have some additional questions
	regarding the service module. I may get back to you or I may
	ask you to respond for the record.
	Mr. Stokes.

	aeronautics research programs

	Mr. Stokes. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
	Mr. Chairman, I would note that Mrs. Meek of Florida has
	now joined us.
	Mrs. Meek, you might know that prior to your arrival, the
	chairman accorded me the privilege of acknowledging the fact
	that you are now on this subcommittee, and we welcome you, a
	very valued member of this Appropriations Committee, and we are
	happy to have you with us.
	Mrs. Meek. Thank you so much. I am privileged.
	Mr. Stokes. Thank you.
	Administrator Goldin, you have announced that you are
	reprogramming $500 million in previously appropriated NASA
	aeronautics funds to pay for NASA efforts on aviation safety
	and security and the changes we made in task and personnel
	assignments at NASA facilities to accomplish this. Is that
	correct?
	Mr. Goldin. That is correct.
	Mr. Stokes. All right. Tell us what will be the impact on
	current aeronautics research programs.
	Mr. Goldin. We will be reviewing that over the next months
	ahead. Most of it will be reprogramming within the R&T base,
	which is funded on the order of $400 million a year, and will
	be a reassignment of people and projects within that base.
	Mr. Stokes. What will be the impact on current aeronautics
	research programs?
	Mr. Goldin. It will be a reprioritization of those programs
	to acknowledge the challenge that the Vice President of the
	United States has asked us to undertake. I view this as an
	honor.
	If you will take a look for the last decade, the crash
	rate, the fatal crash rate for planes has remained flat. It has
	not come down.
	Over the next two decades, it is anticipated that there
	will be a tripling in the number of takeoffs from planes, and
	if we do nothing, the American public will see a major crash
	every week, which will be very disruptive to air travel.
	The Vice President has asked NASA to lead the research
	activity on a national basis to see if we could cut the crash
	rate by 80 percent in the next 10 years and by a factor of 10
	in the next 20 years. This is so crucial to the vitality of the
	Nation, very tough. A lot of people said why are you signing up
	for such a tough goal, and I say we should. It is so crucial,
	we did not want to come back to this committee and ask for more
	money. So we said we would reprogram out of our existing
	resources because I could think of no more noble task for NASA
	to undertake than aircraft safety.
	Mr. Stokes. Will any NASA programs and activities be cut
	back in order to fund this?
	Mr. Goldin. Yes.
	Mr. Stokes. Can you tell us which activities andprograms
	will be cut back?
	Mr. Goldin. At this point in time, we can't because we are
	undertaking the reprogramming analysis right now, but again, I
	want to come back and say that we feel that aircraft safety is
	so important that it ought to take a role and cause us to
	reprioritize.
	The issue we face now, given that there are limited funds
	in the Nation, is a reprioritization, rather than coming back
	and asking for more funds.
	Mr. Stokes. Is carryover a part of this whole situation?
	Mr. Goldin. I do not believe so because the aeronautics
	enterprise, Dr. Whitehead, has done an outstanding job in the
	management of uncosted carryover. He is one of our super stars.
	Mr. Stokes. When do you anticipate that you will furnish
	this subcommittee details relative to this program?
	Mr. Whitehead. Sir, we have a NASA industry task force that
	held its first series of meetings last week. We think that by
	the early summer or the beginning of May or June, we will have
	a scenario that shows where we will reprogram.
	If I could, I might mention that within our R&T base, our
	normal completion of task is somewhere between 15 and 20
	percent a year, and in the R&D account to take on this
	challenge, it requires a balance of 10 percent. So it won't
	impact termination of task so much as an interface with the
	safety research task at the completion of other tasks,
	primarily in the aircraft performance.
	Mr. Stokes. You would anticipate, would you not, on the
	carryover, some of the centers would be affected?
	Mr. Whitehead. Some of them won't be affected as much as
	some of the reserves that we carry that we used, and it will
	increase the risk in some programs.

	minority employees

	Mr. Stokes. Thank you.
	Mr. Administrator, I want to engage on a topic you and I
	discussed the other day. You remarked that although NASA has
	done a pretty good job of hiring women and minorities, there is
	no room for complacency.
	As you know, many of the minority employees at NASA are
	women and lower-level administrative jobs. In an evermore
	complex and computer-dominated workplace, unless these
	employees continue to learn to develop new skills, they will be
	in danger of losing their jobs in the future.
	I would like to hear more of your thoughts about how to
	confront this challenge, especially in a concerted training
	effort with the National Science Foundation and the University
	of Southern California, among others.
	Mr. Goldin. This is a major problem and not just for NASA
	headquarters, but for America.
	In the last 10 or 15 years, there has been a significant
	gain on the part of minority employees to get into the work
	force. This happened at NASA about 10 or 15 years ago. They
	came into the work force with a very, very small tool set in
	terms of advanced training, in the clerical, secretarial, and
	administrative domain.
	As the information technology kicks in, the need for
	clerical, secretarial, and administrative personnel goes down,
	and they are the first to be on the lines for destaffing and
	loss of jobs.
	As part of the Zero Base Review, we have undertaken a look
	at this problem to try and anticipate, and what we saw at NASA
	headquarters is we had about 130 to 170 people that we have to
	downsize over the next 3 years. About 100 of them were women,
	many of them single parents, that fit into this category.
	So what we have done is gone out and talked to a variety of
	organizations and agencies to see how we could develop their
	skills, and it turns out that we have new information skills
	necessary at NASA. Of course, we are going to put in a new
	integrated financial management system.
	So, rather than laying off these employees and then hiring
	new employees at a higher skill level, we are going to set up a
	very unique training program. We are going to work in
	cooperation with other Government agencies, with other
	universities to train these employees, and the first training
	program is going to start in months. It is going to be
	voluntary, and we hope that by the fall of this year, we will
	have trained 50 to 60 of these women, and they are mostly
	women, to move up to higher-level jobs.
	We will then take that pilot program, and hopefully, it
	will glide across the agency, and make that data available to
	corporations.
	Mr. Stokes. I believe you mentioned that funding of
	approximately $10 million annually could go a long way in
	addressing this challenge. Is that correct?
	Mr. Goldin. We don't have the exact number, but it might be
	on that order.
	Mr. Stokes. Good. Does your budget contain any funding for
	those programs?
	Mr. Goldin. Right now, at this point, it does not, and we
	are in an evaluation process to try and understand the actual
	cost.
	We have contacted the University of Maryland, Howard
	University, and George Mason University. They all three
	indicated a willingness to work with us to custom tailor a
	program, and now we have to go into the costing. So we are on
	the front edge of this, and I believe within about 2 months, we
	will be able to get back to you.
	The first class, we have the cost to cover it. It is what
	happens as we spread the program out, and we have time to work
	that.
	Mr. Stokes. Now, part of your analysis there is or is not
	the fact that you are looking for areas in which you could get
	the money. Is that a part of your role?
	Mr. Goldin. That will be part of our analysis.
	The initial money, we have, but when we want to expand the
	program to other NASA centers and to other areas, we are going
	to need some more money, and I believe we will be ready for
	that in 1 to 2 months to talk to you in specifics.
	Mr. Stokes. All right. Well, I think there are several
	areas, illustrative areas that I would like to suggest to you
	where I think we could find the money, areas where you did find
	in your budget to put what I think is excessive money.
	Mr. Goldin. We will be pleased to work with you.
	Mr. Stokes. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
	Mr. Lewis. Thank you, Mr. Stokes.
	Mr. Knollenberg.

	financial management

	Mr. Knollenberg. Mr. Chairman, thank you.
	Mr. Goldin, good to see you again. Thanks for coming before
	the committee. We get entertained by you, I think, a couple of
	times a year or something like that.
	One thing I do want to----
	Mr. Goldin. I hope illuminated, too.
	Mr. Knollenberg. Illuminated? Well, in fact, illumination
	is what I wanted to get into here on a couple of things.
	I credit you with running, I think, a shop that you set
	out, you blueprinted, and you stuck pretty close to precisely
	what you aim to do, and so if we had that kind of cooperation
	from every single group or agency that comes before us, I think
	balancing the budget will be a lot easier.
	Incidently, we have from Michigan, not too far from my home
	town, an astronaut who is currently in the Space Station, and
	so----
	Mr. Goldin. Dr. Jerry Linenger.
	Mr. Knollenberg. Yes, from Wayne State, you probably know.
	In reference to after having said those nice things about
	you, let me look at a couple of things that I don't understand
	and I think perhaps you or one of your designees can explain
	this to me.
	Mr. Goldin. We must be accountable to the Congress, and we
	welcome your questions.
	Mr. Knollenberg. I understand. I believe the budget rated
	fairly well in terms of the numbers, but where I get a little
	bit lost is your terminology on ``estimated,'' ``uncosted,''
	and ``obligated.'' I am looking at a sheet, for example, that
	was passed out to me that describes that of the $1.8 billion
	that is available for the Space Station, there is some 54.7
	that is stated as unobligated as of 9/30/96. Is that the same
	thing as an unspent balance? Is that a separate firewall
	between the----
	Mr. Goldin. Yes.
	Mr. Knollenberg. What is it? What are you doing out there?
	Mr. Peterson. Basically----
	Mr. Goldin. Could I? Let me give an overview, and then I
	would like Mal to give you the specifics, as he is the NASA
	comptroller.
	We have a problem at NASA, and it is bigger than the Space
	Station program, and I just want to lay the problem on the
	table in the broader sense.
	When I came to NASA, I found we had outstanding people, but
	we had management systems that didn't help these people. The
	GAO did a study in '92 which said of our top programs, top 29
	programs, the average cost growth was 77 percent. That was
	because NASA was allowing the requirements to change before
	they got frozen.
	The managers at NASA didn't sign a contract with the
	administrator on cost, schedule, and performance, and many of
	our contractors said, well, let's buy in because if we launch
	it and it works, it is successful, and everyone will forget the
	sins of schedule and cost performance that doesn't work.
	So we put in a very rigid system, and that 77 percent cost
	growth is now an underrun of 6 percent. This is an amazing
	achievement, and the people at NASA are outstanding and they
	did it.
	If you will, we put tremendous fear in them on overrun. It
	will no longer be tolerated. Contractors are told if they
	overrun more than 15 percent, we could cancel a program and
	they will not get future business with NASA.
	What we have is an overreaction in one direction. People
	are so concerned that they----
	Mr. Knollenberg. They cut too much?
	Mr. Goldin. They didn't cut too much, but they held back.
	If there was any uncertainty, they would hold back reserves.
	If there was some uncertainty as to whether or not they
	should place a contract when the plants had placed a contract,
	they would wait until it was just right. This is good behavior,
	but in the process, we have got uncommitted funds that was
	budgeted and planned for allocation, but didn't happen.
	So now we are in the second phase of the process where we
	are telling people not only do we want you to perform in the
	long picture, but we want you to do what you say you are going
	to do in the rate at which the funds get allocated.
	So I want to openly tell you, we have a problem. I don't
	want to hold it back. But we have a series of steps that we are
	going to take to fix it, and we are on the path to good health.
	That is the reason you are seeing that.
	Mr. Knollenberg. And I see it on every single category,
	too, right down the line. So, apparently, it varies in size,
	and some of those amounts are fairly large. So the next step--
	am I to believe that the estimated uncosted column is the
	obligated, but not expended over a multi-year period? Is that
	what it is?
	Mr. Peterson. NASA Comptroller, Mal Peterson.
	Obligated, of course, means that you have appropriated the
	funds to us----
	Mr. Knollenberg. Right.
	Mr. Peterson [continuing]. But we have not put them on
	contract. So we have not obligated the government to spend this
	money.
	Uncosted means that the contractor has got the funds. He
	has not done the work necessary to incur the liability for the
	Government to pay for the work that has been performed.
	So, when he performs the work, he incurs the cost. Now, the
	difference, then, at any time between what you have in terms of
	your budget authority and the amount you have costed, is the
	amount that is available for work to be performed.
	Mr. Knollenberg. For work to be performed.
	Mr. Peterson. For work to be performed.
	Typically, for instance, we carry over about $4.5 billion
	out of our appropriation into the next fiscal year.
	Mr. Knollenberg. That is about 4.4, I think I saw here
	somewhere.
	Mr. Peterson. Yes, and that has been a trend.
	Now, in terms of tightening up the financial management
	which Dan has talked about, is where we are actually trying to
	get more effective financial management so that we reduce the
	amount of uncosted carryover that we have at fiscal year end.
	That way, we allocate our resources to do research work.
	Mr. Knollenberg. That figure is higher.
	Mr. Peterson. Well, it is actually, statistically, over
	NASA's history not remarkably high. We have 2-year money and
	CofF money, which is construction money, which is, of course,
	no-year money. So you will always have a fairly significant
	carryover.
	Now, in terms of months, you are working with roughly 3 to
	4 months. So if you put the time perspective on it, it helps in
	the sense of looking at the fact that you should have a certain
	amount of carryover at the fiscal year end because not to do so
	would be putting you in violation of the----
	Mr. Knollenberg. Let me just insert another question, if I
	can, Mr. Chairman.
	Mr. Lewis. Sure.
	Mr. Knollenberg. I will move on because of the time
	situation. I have some other questions as well, which I maynot
	be able to get answered, but will submit.

	buyouts

	In regard to the FTEs--and I know that you have provided us
	with a draft that sort of indicates where we are, and actually,
	where we are is sort of like in between those first two, I
	think. We haven't hit mid-fiscal year. Well, we are getting
	there, aren't we? We are pretty close. So I guess we are.
	My question has to do with the final area which involves
	the buyouts, the consolidation, the outsourcing, redeployment,
	and particularly, with buyouts. I think we have gone through
	this before, Mr. Goldin, but with respect to those buyouts,
	what are the requirements? What is the profile that you draw up
	to provide a buyout kind of situation? Does it have a years-of-
	service requirement, and if so, how much? It probably has a
	salary factor that has to be adhered to. What kind of buyout
	provisions does an individual have? What are those specifics?
	Mr. Goldin. First, I would like to provide an overview, and
	then I will turn it over to Sam Armstrong who is in charge of
	this area.
	I made a commitment to our employees that I would like to
	avoid forced layoffs. It is so disruptive, and the people that
	go are just the people you want to keep. It is horrible.
	We have been able to downsize, voluntarily, 20 percent of
	our force, as 5,000 human beings are no longer with NASA. The
	buyout covered about 3 of those 5,000 people.
	Mr. Knollenberg. About 60 percent, then.
	Mr. Goldin. About 60 percent.
	So it is a crucial aspect. It is a tool in my tool kit that
	industry has, and industry has a much larger flexibility than
	we do, but it allows our employees to leave with dignity. It
	allows them to feel good, and it is also targeted to specific
	areas. We don't just have it broad-based.
	Initially, it was broad-based, and now we are targeting
	closer and closer to areas where we have a surplus of
	employees. So that is the philosophy.
	Sam, could you talk about the details?
	Mr. Armstrong. Spence Armstrong, the Associate
	Administrator for Human Resources and Education.
	The Zero Base Review that NASA did almost 2 years ago came
	up with an end statement in the year 2000 with a certain number
	by installation. So we looked at where we were today on that
	chart and where we wanted to go, and we counted the difference.
	That is where we targeted the buyouts.
	We asked each of the centers, each of the installations to
	come forward with their plan within certain kinds of
	guidelines, and they came back and we negotiated with them. For
	instance, some centers didn't offer a buyout at all. Others
	offered it to selected people. In a general rule, you don't
	offer it to anybody you have to replace. So they came in with
	their plans, and we set up a ceiling so that we would not go
	below the target workforce for the year 2000, and each of the
	centers came back in with their plan, and they executed it and
	liked it.
	It varied by center, who they offered it to. There were no
	restrictions in some cases who could take it. In other cases,
	there were. So each center was unique. We have that information
	which we could provide.
	Mr. Knollenberg. In the interest of time, that might be
	appropriate.
	I would like to know if the buyout approximates or mirrors
	what it has done in the private sector.
	Mr. Goldin. We can answer for the record.
	Mr. Lewis. If you would, that would be helpful.
	Mr. Goldin. By the way, this committee gave us the multi-
	year authority to do the buyout, and I want to tell you, it has
	been essential. Our young people were terrified. It is not that
	I don't like middle-aged people because I am one, but many of
	us are going to retire in the years ahead, and if we lost our
	young people and the mature people retired, there wouldn't be a
	NASA. So this has been very, very valuable.
	Mr. Knollenberg. Thank you.
	[The ``Center Buyout Plans for FY 1997'' follow:]


	[Pages 16 - 18--The official Committee record contains additional material here.]




	Mr. Lewis. David Price, welcome back to the Congress, but
	also, especially, this committee.

	russian collaborative efforts

	Mr. Price. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
	I would like to ask some questions as a new member of this
	subcommittee, but also as a veteran of some of the past battles
	over the Space Station on the House floor.
	As you recall, Mr. Administrator, you made a very
	convincing argument at the time that the authorization of the
	Space Station was at issue that this was a genuine
	collaboration with the Russians; that the Russians brought a
	great deal to the table; that this collaboration was valuable,
	both for their country and for ours; and that it was a
	collaboration in the fullest sense of the word and that we had
	a great deal to gain by proceeding in this cooperative fashion.
	Given that argument and given the experience of this
	collaboration since then, then the question obviously does
	arise. How much of all this is thrown into doubt by the current
	slippage in the schedule on their side and the current
	difficulties there, funding difficulties that our Russian
	partners are experiencing? Are we prepared to compensate? I
	know you touch on that in your statement. I would like to have
	you focus on that. Is the problem less severe than it might
	have been 2 years ago, had this kind of problem occurred?
	I guess my question goes to the state of this collaborative
	effort, what the Russians are now bringing to the table, how
	critical this is, and to what extent we are prepared to
	compensate if we must.
	Mr. Goldin. First, let me answer it technically, and then I
	will answer it philosophically.
	Technically, it is my opinion that had we not worked with
	the Russians and had the Shuttle/Mir flights, I am not sure we
	would have been able to build this Space Station. The Russians
	have taught us more than we have taught them. They have been in
	space for 10 years.
	Problems. We had never docked the shuttle to an orbital
	vehicle. It weighs a quarter-of-a-million pounds, and you
	allowed no more than 600 pounds on the docking force, as these
	two vehicles are traveling at 17,000 miles an hour. The
	Russians built the docking module for us and taught us how to
	do that maneuver.
	We have learned a tremendous amount about environmental
	control systems. One of the major scientific problems for the
	Space Station was the jitter that would be involved in that
	station as astronauts push off the wall or as the solar space
	twirl around. On the Mir Space Station, we have tested anti-
	jitter equipment that now give us confidence in our science.
	We have done some remarkable things in biomedicine. We have
	operated the bioreactor for months, instead of weeks,and this
	technology is now being dispersed for cancer research across the
	country. It is impacting a lot of things.
	In biotechnology and drug design, the Russians have taught
	us a lot, and I am not trying to say that we don't know things
	in America, but the Russians have taught us.
	Secondly, when we went into this arrangement, we took $2
	billion out of this Space Station budget and accelerated its
	schedule by 18 months. The Russians have provided tremendous
	capability there.
	Now, are there problems? You bet. Do we want to hold them
	accountable? Yes, sir; but it is my estimation that the
	Russians still bring more to the program than less, and we are
	trying to work on the approaches that keep the program moving,
	and then when the Russians arrive, they will arrive.
	Philosophically, we have on this Space Station program
	probably the closest relationship with the Russians, our enemy
	for 50 years, than almost any other program in this country.
	When our astronauts go onto that Russian Space Station or
	they come to our shuttle, they genuinely respect each other,
	and we have learned a lot from it. You can't sit on both sides
	of the ocean and expect to go into the 21st century and just
	shoot press releases at each other. You have to learn how to
	work with the Russians.
	Now, I built weapons for 25 years. I am proud of that. It
	was part of the cold war activity, but I want you to understand
	we have got to do things differently in the 21st century. I
	believe NASA is tough enough, America is tough enough, that the
	risk is worth it.
	Could we fail? Yes, but think about what happened at the
	end of World War I, and this is outside of NASA. I am not
	speaking as the administrator now. I am speaking as a citizen.
	We watched as a Germany developed because we ignored them.
	The Russians are having genuine problems. They want to go from
	Communism to democracy and from a controlled economy to an open
	economy. It is a mess. There are tremendous problems in Russia,
	and I salute my peer, Yuri Koptev, in the midst of that chaos
	in being able to have an incredible launch record, high-quality
	equipment. Those Russian scientists and engineers are more
	frustrated than we are, and somehow as a nation, we have got to
	figure out how to work our way through it, and I will do
	everything I can.
	However, I do feel I have a fiduciary responsibility to the
	American taxpayer, and we must protect their precious funds. I
	can't give you guarantees, but I want to come back to what I
	said in my opening statement, which you may not have heard.
	People said we shouldn't fix the Hubble telescope because
	it already worked, but NASA went up and fixed it because we
	wanted to move forward, and at NASA, we are not afraid to take
	risks.
	Mr. Price. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
	Mr. Lewis. Thank you, Mr. Price.
	We do have votes on the floor, but we do have some time to
	dwell. The other gentleman from Ohio, Mr. Hobson.

	x-33/x-34 launch vehicle

	Mr. Hobson. I will try to be brief.
	Again, I salute this agency. I hope some day, we can put
	together a chart that shows where you have come from in the
	management so that the public really understands the systems
	and controls that have come into this agency in recent times,
	and I am glad you were reappointed as the administrator.
	You don't have to answer these now, but I am interested in
	the new X-33/X-34 launch vehicle because there is some risk in
	that. I applaud you for taking the risk because although we can
	have some problems, I think the benefits outweigh the risks.
	The most important concern I am hearing today, and I had
	this concern before I came to this hearing, NASA needs to think
	about a PR approach relating to the Russian funding problem
	with the space station. How you are going to talk to the
	Congress as a whole about this problem? There is great concern
	about this issue. You can hear it from everybody that is here.
	As we get into the battle over the Space Station, you are
	going to have to carry the ball, but we are, too, and we need
	to be prepared. I think we can do it, but you are going to have
	to help us through that as well.
	I think, also, on the Mission to Planet Earth, you have got
	to do some work on that, to talk to people about that, so that
	people understand the benefits of the program.
	Lastly, Mr. Stokes and I share an interest in the
	cooperative NASA student program. Last year, I raised some
	concerns with you about interagency relationships, and I am
	happy to see that Lewis and Wright-Patterson are not
	necessarily competing today, but they are trying to work
	together, and I think that is positive. I am interested in a
	NASA student program, the science, engineering, mathematics,
	and Aerospace Academy program. I am happy to see the expansion
	of this program at Sinclair College and Wright-Patterson Air
	Force Base. I hope it will reach some of these students that
	are underserved and we can get them into the program working
	with you.
	So I wish you well with these programs, and I am not going
	to take any more time, but you can elaborate later if you want.
	Mr. Goldin. Okay. Let me just say a few words. First, there
	is another aspect that I think is very important. In declining
	budgets, the DOD and NASA must work closely together.
	I have a meeting scheduled with General Estess, this
	Friday, to see how we could support U.S. Space Command,
	especially on things like the future Air Force which is going
	to have space planes. NASA has the responsibility for reuseable
	launch vehicles. So we are working in cooperation with them.
	I went out to the Phillips lab to see how we could
	cooperate better in the technology area, and it turns out that
	the DOD is now organizing, like NASA. They are combining space
	launch and aeronautics. We will now be lined up one for one,
	and as a result, I think we will do a much better job in
	working with the laboratory at Dayton.
	So I thank you for your support because I used your words
	in my discussions with the DOD, and they have been very, very
	cooperative with us. So I think we will be able to respond.
	By the way, we will crash planes and we will crash vehicles
	because you can't go into space and expect everything to work.
	Now, the first vehicles will not have people in it, but
	ultimately, there will be people, and if we want to treat the
	vehicles as being so precious that they will never crash, we
	will never fly. That was a problem for 25 years. We were so
	afraid of crashing, we didn't fly experimental vehicles.
	Mr. Lewis. I have indicated to Mrs. Meek that I would wait
	until after these votes before introducing her to thecommittee
	and taking up her questions. We have about 6 or 7 minutes left.
	I don't know. Mr. Frelinghuysen, would you prefer to wait?
	Mr. Frelinghuysen. I want to follow up on Congressman
	Hobson's comment on the X-33 program. Is that appropriate now,
	or do you want to wait?
	Mr. Lewis. It is appropriate, but if you are going to be
	able to come back, it might be----
	Mr. Frelinghuysen. I will be happy to.

	service module

	Mr. Lewis. Okay. Before we close down, then, I would like
	to close out the service module, but then, I want you to know
	that we have a vote on the floor that is 15 minutes. I am not
	sure if the next vote is 15, but there are three suspensions.
	That will take us to roughly 12:30. So we will probably recess
	very quickly and then come back at 1 o'clock, if that meets
	with your schedule.
	Mr. Goldin. We will do whatever you want to do.
	Mr. Lewis. All right. Briefly, back to the service module
	issue, am I correct in understanding that you do not believe
	the Russians can complete the service module in sufficient time
	to keep the first and second element launches scheduled later
	this year?
	Mr. Goldin. If the Russians are able to launch a service
	module in October, which is one of the things they said they
	would look at, it is conceivable that we could hold the
	schedule, but I very seriously doubt it.
	Mr. Lewis. You are very skeptical.
	Mr. Goldin. I am very skeptical.
	Mr. Lewis. All right.
	Mr. Goldin. My sense is we are going to have to slip first
	element launch, but I am a scientist and engineer, and
	rationally, I want to go through the process. I want to be able
	to review it and then give you a specific decision rather than
	flipping back and forth.
	Mr. Lewis. It is very important for the record we have an
	idea what you really are thinking.
	Mr. Goldin. But it is my sense that the first element
	launch is going to slip.
	Mr. Lewis. Are any of the options you described earlier
	able to support launches this year?
	Mr. Goldin. Yes.
	Mr. Lewis. All right.
	Mr. Goldin. And that is, if the Russians really have the
	funding and they could deliver the service module in October.
	Mr. Lewis. All right.
	Mr. Goldin. But the probability of that is so low. I want
	to be candid with you and tell you my position.

	fgb modification

	Mr. Lewis. We need that for the record, and I appreciate
	it.
	You mentioned that the current leading option is
	modification of the first element FGB. Do you expect the U.S.
	or the Russians to pay for those modifications?
	Mr. Goldin. Since negotiations are going on right now, I
	would prefer to be a little vague on that point until we
	understand what is going on.
	Mr. Lewis. I understand.
	Members, if it meets with all of your agreement, we will
	recess until 1 o'clock. Since we are going to have these votes,
	we wouldn't be coming back, anyway. So, in the meantime, I hope
	you all have a delightful sandwich.

	Afternoon Session

	Mr. Lewis. The meeting will come to order.
	Mr. Director, for some time now, it has been my delight to
	enjoy, experience, provide, to share input from the gentlelady,
	Carrie Meek. It is especially a delight to have her now as a
	new member of this subcommittee, and it is my pleasure to
	recognize Mrs. Meek.

	women and minorities

	Mrs. Meek. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
	I must say that I want to say to the space people who are
	here, I have always supported your programs, and I hope I will
	be able to continue. I hope that being on this committee won't
	hurt my support of you.
	I need to go back to something that Congressman Stokes
	commented on, and it had to do with the participation of women
	and minorities. It seemed to me that your answer to him was
	based upon your current status of having those people who
	probably entered at the very beginning. Women and minorities
	probably entered at the lower level in NASA.
	So, as a result of that, they are pretty much now--because
	they were perhaps--this is my observation--perhaps lumped into
	those, perhaps, lower-level jobs. I just don't know how many
	you could have in management now, or when I look around this
	table, I don't see any, but I am sure there must be some in
	your managerial area.
	Of course, it just looks like NASA had a paucity of women
	and minorities in its management setup. If that were so, then
	we wouldn't be in the bind we are in now in terms of answering
	the congressman's question regarding that particular segment.
	Certainly, now with the cutbacks, it is going to be
	difficult, Mr. Director, to do what your heart, perhaps, could
	have mandated much sooner than now. As my mother would say,
	``be that as it may,'' I am hoping that you will be able to do
	a better job with what you have left. You have experienced
	quite a few cutbacks and reductions which will require RIF-ing
	a lot of people, and I can understand that.
	Mr. Goldin. We did not do a RIF.
	Mrs. Meek. Well, you cut, which is another word for RIF.
	You reduced staff.
	Mr. Goldin. Voluntarily, as compared to forced.
	Mrs. Meek. Well, if I were working for NASA, I certainly
	wouldn't have voluntarily quit unless there were some reason.
	There had to be some reason behind all of those people
	quitting, but anyway, that is nonessential here.
	I am concerned about--I am from Florida, as you know.
	Mr. Goldin. Yes.

	reusable launch vehicles

	Mrs. Meek. So I am very concerned because the State of
	Florida is supposing to invest in the development of facilities
	at the Kennedy Space Center, and it would support your reusable
	launch vehicle, your RLV programs, and it will allow the space
	shuttle OMDP operations at the launch site, and ostensibly,
	this would save NASA and the taxpayers millions of dollars.
	Will NASA support this kind of partnership with State
	government?

	women and minorities

	Mr. Goldin. Okay. Let me answer the first question. I came
	to NASA in 1992, April 1st. At that time, there were 26
	minority Americans in the Senior Executive Service.
	Today, even though the employment at NASA went down 5,000,
	there were 47 minority Americans in the Senior Executive
	Service. So we have almost doubled.
	There were 27 white women in the Senior Executive Service
	when they arrived, and today, there are 41. So, while we have
	been downsizing, we have been searching out the very best in
	the agency on merit, not just looking at the boundary of their
	skin, and we have made a significant change.
	In fact, we have in 5 years promoted as many minority
	Americans as in the first 35 years of NASA. So that is one
	statistic I ask you to keep in your mind.
	Secondly, while the population at NASA has gone down 20
	percent and minority Americans now make up 3 percent more of
	the labor force, and not less, we have been very, very focused
	and sensitive on this issue, always looking at how we could
	provide opportunities for people, and then, on top of that, we
	now have an African American who runs one of our NASA centers. We
	didn't have that before.
	We have senior African Americans reporting to the
	administrator, and I would like to introduce you to Mr. Ralph
	Thomas, who is the associate administrator at NASA for Small
	Business, and George Reese, right over there, and then we have
	Benita Cooper who is a Native American, and we have many, many
	minorities and women reporting to me.
	We have an Hispanic American who is the deputy director of
	NASA-Goddard, but we promote people based upon their ability to
	perform and their potential to perform. Clearly, we won't
	change it overnight, but I want you to understand my commitment
	to that.
	The other thing we have done is we have set up a training
	program to join the Senior Executive Service, and in those
	training classes, based upon a survey across the agency, we
	have seen very large numbers of minority Americans and women in
	that class based on merit, and they then become eligible for
	the next levels of promotions.
	And by the way, while the number of minority Americans went
	from 26 to 47 in the last 5 years, the total Senior Executive
	Service went from 547 to 386. So this is really bucking the
	tide. So the degree of difficulty was very difficult, but we
	are going to continue moving because NASA has to look like a
	mariner. That is my first point.

	Reusable launch vehicle

	The second point, RLV investment. We want to work with the
	State of Florida. We believe that the NASA Kennedy Center is
	crucial to the future of this agency. There are a number of
	different space ports in States that are competing for the
	space business, and they are very, very aggressive.
	I met with some of the members of the Florida community to
	tell them there is now competition out there. The fact that the
	State is now wanting to step up and work with us, I think, is a
	terrific signal.
	So we are prepared to work with the State on a variety of
	issues, and we will do whatever is in the interest of the
	American people in terms of--is it the lowest cost, highest
	performance? By God, then we will make the decision to do it,
	one place versus the other.

	orbiter maintenance down period

	Mrs. Meek. I'm glad to hear that. By your own studies, you
	have revealed that it will be cheaper to handle this kind of
	operation. Your own studies indicate that performing this kind
	of shows overhauls in Florida and the kinds of work that you
	are doing with them. It is the cheaper thing, and I am hoping
	that you will keep that in mind in terms if there is a cheaper
	methodology for reaching your goals, as stated by your own
	studies.
	Mr. Goldin. Well, let me say this. I think the study you
	are referring to is the one that was done by the----
	Mrs. Meek. It is called the OMDP.
	Mr. Goldin. OMDP.
	Mrs. Meek. Yes.
	Mr. Goldin. When that study was done, the study was done, I
	think, in 1995, and they costed out what we call a nominal or a
	routine OMDP. That is where they do just a check of the system.
	Some of the OMDPs that have been done since then are very,
	very comprehensive and need to be done in the factory and
	create flow problems with the work at Kennedy.
	We have been looking at this on a case-by-case basis, and I
	have asked our contractor, the USA Corporation, to make a more
	long-term finding, to take a look at a broader number of
	flights, and to see if it is worth making an investment in
	Florida or making an investment in California to perform this
	work with the highest reliability and lowest cost.
	We are going to ask the contractor to present the findings
	to us, and then we will share them with the various
	constituencies that are interested.

	ksc--center of excellence

	Mrs. Meek. If I may go a little bit further. NASA
	recommended--you identified KSC as one of your--as the center
	of excellence for the kinds of activities in terms of the
	consolidation moves, I understand, that you are thinking about
	making, and you followed through on that recommendation,
	relative to move several launch and payload programs to
	Florida. You have not followed through on those, and as a
	Floridian, I would like to know.
	It seems to me that you may be looking in other areas, and
	I would just like to know what commitment do you really have to
	doing that consolidation with the KSC as the center.
	There were some recommendations made that you would move
	several launch and payload programs to Florida. Am I correct in
	that assumption?
	Mr. Goldin. Well, I will tell you what I do know. We have
	made a major decision to move the Space Station, a lot of the
	Space Station payload integration and system integration work
	to Florida, and we have a fellow named Tip Talone at NASA-
	Kennedy who has done a superb job. Our contractor was not
	performing well in that task in another area.
	Another decision we have made is to put in a vacuum chamber
	at NASA-Kennedy. Apparently, in the mid-'70s, someone decided
	to take an incredible vacuum chamber and turn it into office
	space. It is unbelievable, and as a result, we were not vacuum-
	testing our payloads before we launched them. Because this is
	the right place to do it, we will be putting in a vacuum
	chamber down at NASA-Kennedy.
	The third thing we have done at Kennedy is that we felt
	that any shuttle upgrades must involve the engineering people
	at Kennedy, and Joanne Morgan is now the associate director of
	NASA-Kennedy for shuttle upgrades, and they are working with
	the people at Johnson. So they are very much involved.
	Those are the things I know we have done. Those are the
	things I am absolutely committed to. If there are some other
	issues where you feel we made a commitment and didn't deliver,
	if I get the specifics, I will answer them for the record.
	Mrs. Meek. You mentioned in your testimony that your
	program is going to be delayed, and I would like to know if the
	program that you are referencing--I am not sure if I am right
	on this because I was a little late. What kind of ripple effect
	will it have on the rest of your programs, the consummation of
	the rest of your programs?
	Mr. Goldin. First, I said there is a possibility it will be
	delayed. We have not yet made that decision, and one of the
	reasons we are being very deliberate about this, as we want to
	understand, is that there would be a ripple effect.
	We have to understand the implications for the shuttle
	launch schedule. We want to understand the implications of the
	data that might be lost if we decided to slip it. So we believe
	that in the next 4 to 6 weeks, we will be in a position to
	answer that question more thoroughly, and I will make sure that
	we come and brief you before we move out.
	Mrs. Meek. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
	Mr. Lewis. Thank you, Mrs. Meek.
	Rodney Frelinghuysen was at our meeting this morning
	anddidn't have a chance to ask questions. So, Mr. Frelinghuysen?

	next generation of launch vehicles

	Mr. Frelinghuysen. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
	Mr. Goldin, good afternoon. Good to be with you. I join
	with my colleagues in saluting the work of you and your
	colleagues at NASA.
	I have some questions that relate to the X-33 program, the
	next generation of launch vehicles. How would you describe to
	the average citizen what the next generation is going to look
	like versus what we have now? Then I have some specific
	questions that relate to cost.
	Mr. Goldin. The first issue that we have is that, today,
	launch costs are on the order of $10,000 a pound, and the
	reliability is somewhere on the order of one part in 100, one
	part in 200 on the launch vehicles. The shuttle is probably the
	most reliable system we have.
	Our objective to opening the space frontier to commerce and
	science and national security is we have got to find a way of
	increasing the reliability of those launch vehicles by at least
	a factor of 10 or more and by cutting the cost by at least a
	factor of 10 or more.
	America hasn't invested in a new launch system in over 25
	years. The problem we have with the present ones are multi-
	fold. First, there are two or three stages. For example, the
	shuttle has the strap-on rockets. It has the external tank. So
	you watch a shuttle launch, and first, the solid rockets come
	away. That is the first stage, and then the external tank comes
	away. That is the second stage, and third, you have the
	orbiter. You need a crew on each one of those stages.
	The Delta vehicle has three or four stages. The Atlas has
	three or four stages. The Titan has three or four stages.
	We are trying to utilize technology to see if we could
	build it like an airplane. You don't add anything on, you don't
	take anything off, and it takes off and lands, but that says we
	have to work with the most advanced structural systems in the
	world, and then we want to work on new engines. That is the
	concept that we are trying to perform for America. It is very
	risky. It has never been done before. We think we have a finite
	chance of making it.
	Mr. Frelinghuysen. Is the program on schedule to meet the
	1998 deadline?
	Mr. Goldin. 1999. March 1999.
	Mr. Frelinghuysen. 1999?
	Mr. Goldin. We just had a review out at the Lockheed-Martin
	plant. They have a few schedule problems. They are behind in a
	few areas, but for the most part, I think they have a chance of
	still meeting their launch schedule.

	budget request for new launch vehicles

	Mr. Frelinghuysen. You have included $333.5 million in your
	budget request for the program which is up from last year's
	appropriations of $251.1 million. What do you hope to achieve
	with the additional money?
	Mr. Goldin. We have a very different contract arrangement
	on this one. We tried to be innovative, and we are trying to
	incentivize the commercial sector in America to cost share with
	the Government in developing new launch vehicles.
	Lockheed has invested $220 million of their own money in
	this vehicle. They are in charge of the program, and we ran a
	competition. We asked them what they thought the profile ought
	to be. This is the profile that they had in their program.
	Typically, when you have a development program, you don't
	level fund it. You start out, you peak fund, and then you come
	down. So this is the funding required for this year to meet
	that launch schedule that Lockheed had specified.
	Mr. Frelinghuysen. So they will be putting into the X-33
	for fiscal year 1999 how much?
	Mr. Goldin. You have it. Go ahead.
	Mr. Peterson. Lockheed Martin is contributing a total of
	$211 million, roughly. I guess that is the latest estimate we
	have. For fiscal 1997, they are putting in $88 million; for
	fiscal 1998, $63 million; and for fiscal 1999, $30 million. So
	their profile also matches ours.
	Total X-33 funding for NASA was $112 million in 1996 and
	then ramped up to $250 million in 1997; and then we go further
	and ramped up in the curve to $334 million in 1998.
	Mr. Frelinghuysen. So, beyond 1999, fiscal year 2000 and
	2004?
	Mr. Peterson. The program cooperative agreement ends in the
	year 2000, and our final increment is $75 million in 2000.
	Mr. Goldin. I would like to point out that one of the tasks
	that we have given of the Lockheed-Martin Company is to relate
	the X-33, which is a purely experimental vehicle, to a program
	we call the RLV, which would be a commercial vehicle, and tell
	us how do you map what you are doing on the X-33 to the RLV
	because we are hoping that what they will be able to do is go
	to the financial community after we retire the risk to an
	acceptable level and finance the production of this vehicle,
	and we would just become a user of that vehicle.
	We reviewed that with the CEOs of Lockheed and Boeing and
	Allied Signal, and we have asked them to get back to us because
	it may be necessary to do some additional work, which we have
	not defined yet, but this is the amount of money we have in the
	contract to cover through the first launch of that vehicle.
	After that first launch, there may be some other risk
	reduction test we want to undertake, and we will have to do
	that.
	We owe the Administration a report of our integrated plan
	for the reusable launch vehicle and the shuttle and our support
	to national security in the launch area. We owe them that
	report in September. We will clearly, after we get with the
	Administration, review that with the Congress as part of the
	fiscal 1999 process, so everyone has visibility of where we are
	going.
	We were concerned that there are a number of programs going
	on in NASA, in the DOD, and we want to make sure we are all
	coordinated, so we minimize the expenditures of taxpayers.
	Mr. Frelinghuysen. I am sort of getting back to where I
	started from. By any definition, the design is revolutionary
	inasmuch as it basically somewhat parallels what I consider as
	a layperson, aircraft design.
	Mr. Goldin. It is revolutionary. I mean, it looks like Luke
	Skywalker's vehicle. It doesn't look like anything you have
	seen before.
	Mr. Frelinghuysen. So, to the average citizen, this is like
	a major step forward.
	Mr. Goldin. Yes, sir. Yes, sir.
	Mr. Frelinghuysen. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I will have
	some additional questions in a few minutes again.
	Mr. Lewis. Thank you, Mr. Frelinghuysen.
	It is my pleasure, Mr. Administrator, to welcome a new
	member to our committee, Roger Wicker, for 5 minutes.

	lead center concept

	Mr. Wicker. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It is a pleasure to be
	on the committee, and although I am new here, I have certainly
	had an opportunity to deal with Mr. Goldin about some projects
	in my own State of Mississippi.
	Let me ask you about the lead center concept. Over the last
	several years, NASA has reorganized its management in order to
	reduce cost. They have reduced infrastructure and designated
	certain installations as lead centers; for example, the Stennis
	Space Center. I understand it has been designated as a lead
	center with regard to two issues, propulsion testing and
	commercial remote sensing.
	Would you, first of all, give me the progress-to-date on
	this lead center approach?
	Mr. Goldin. Yes. I would be pleased to do that, and I would
	also like to say it hasn't been easy.
	I started in 1992, and I toured all the NASA centers, and I
	found we had too many propulsion facilities. I found there were
	seven propulsion facilities in the country, and I asked a
	question, ``Is any one of these facilities the best in the
	world?'' The answer I received was, ``No, because there is not
	enough money for any one of these facilities to operate.'' Some
	were in Government, and some were in industry. It is that trip
	that convinced me we had to do something.
	The problem is people get very attached to the space
	program. They don't want to leave it. They love it, but the
	fact of the matter is, the American taxpayers said they want
	more performance for less money. So we had to make a decision,
	where is the one place we are going to give the lead for
	propulsion testing, and that was NASA-Stennis.
	The last 2 years have been very difficult because of the
	tremendous love the other people have for propulsion testing,
	but I want to tell you, we are now there. We are upgrading the
	facilities at the NASA-Stennis. We have released the first $45
	million to give us the best test facilities in the world for
	propulsion testing, and that task ought to be finished, I
	think, within the next 2 years.
	When we get done, there will be no question that this is
	the best place for doing propulsion testing at the lowest
	possible cost. So we are now almost there.
	We took it a step further and said this has to go beyond
	NASA. So we initiated a discussion with the Department of
	Defense and asked, ``Where is the right place to do the
	propulsion testing?'' If we just replicate each other's
	facilities and go through independent budget processes, we may
	make it through the Congress, but is it fair to the taxpayers?
	So we are now wrestling that bear to the ground, and we have
	meetings at the highest level with the DOD to see if it would
	be appropriate to do propulsion testing for all the country at
	NASA-Stennis.
	Now, there are various constituent interests, and people
	are going to be very uncomfortable, but what I want to say is I
	have committed to this committee and to my boss, the President,
	that we will give the very best recommendations, and if it
	means we have to move something from one portion of the country
	to the other, we will. I want you to know I am an advocate for
	pressing into this issue on propulsion testing.

	commercial remote sensing

	Mr. Wicker. All right. How about commercial remote sensing?
	Mr. Goldin. NASA-Stennis has demonstrated a capacity to
	understand commercial remote sensing. We do our scientific
	remote sensing at the NASA-Goddard. They are the lead center.
	We talked to some investment bankers, and they did some
	studies for us and convinced us that there is the possibility
	that this business would blossom from a billion a year to $10
	to $15 billion a year. This is one of the things that NASA is
	supposed to do. While we do basic science, we want to help
	generate new industries.
	We have put them in charge. We have signed all of the
	agreements. We are moving out aggressively. NASA is goingto be
	performing a data buy for $50 million, which is a new way of doing
	business, and they have been given the responsibility of conducting
	that competition.

	centers of excellence

	Mr. Wicker. All right. Now, this effort to coordinate with
	DOD and the other Government agencies and NASA, is that the
	concept of Centers of Excellence?
	Mr. Goldin. Yes, sir.
	Mr. Wicker. Okay. Well, if you could, explain a little
	further to me how you expect that to work and how far along you
	are on that. You touched on it already.
	Mr. Goldin. Well, let me just say that we intend to test
	our Centers of Excellence. Do they have the best facilities, do
	they have the best people, and we have periodic reviews by
	outside reviewers to tell us that they are making progress. So
	that is one of the methods we use.
	Secondly, we gauge it by how many customers come to them.
	Industry is now coming to NASA-Stennis to do their propulsion
	testing because they could offer up the lowest-cost testing
	because they have the best facilities in certain areas. That is
	another measure that we use.
	So I think we are on the path to do it, and we are doing
	the same thing in the commercial remote sensing area. In fact,
	some of the commercial companies have told us that they really
	prefer working with NASA-Stennis because they had helped open
	some barriers to them in the area of commercial remote sensing.

	inter-agency coordination

	Mr. Wicker. Just a quick follow-up, Mr. Chairman.
	Do you need any further authorization or does DOD need any
	further authorization for this type of coordination that you
	envision?
	Mr. Goldin. Not at this time.
	We have reinvigorated the AACB, the Astronautics and
	Aeronautics Coordinating Board. The Under Secretary of Defense
	for Acquisition and R&D in the DOD and the NASA Deputy
	Administrator meet with this board, and we have all the
	leadership of both sides working together. The cooperation is
	fabulous. We have been working facilities issues. We have been
	working responsibility issues, and there are things that NASA
	will not do because the DOD is doing it. It is not a one-way
	street. I am very, very pleased with the progress we are
	making.
	Should we need statutory language, we will be prepared to
	come back to the Congress to get it.
	Mr. Wicker. Thank you.
	Mr. Lewis. Thank you, Mr. Wicker. Welcome to the committee.
	Mr. Wicker. Thank you, sir.
	Mr. Lewis. Mr. Goldin, I noted with interest by way of your
	earlier comments, April Fools Day 1992?
	Mr. Goldin. Someone walked up to me and said, Mr. Goldin, I
	want to offer you condolences on becoming the NASA
	Administrator at Dulles Airport on March 31st, just before I
	started, and I said, ``You don't understand, I got the best job
	in the world.''
	Mr. Lewis. On the Internet, you see a couple of brothers
	who are involved in this thing called the Foolish Forts and
	Investment Group, and they are very interesting people. You are
	their kind of fools. We are glad you made that mistake.
	Mr. Goldin. It is a privilege to be a fool.

	diversifying the workforce

	Mr. Lewis. Mrs. Meek, I wanted to mention to you, beyond
	welcoming you to the committee, that some of your questions
	that addressed, for lack of a better term, affirmative action
	kinds of questions, it is a line of questioning that Mr. Stokes
	and I have pursued with all of our agencies over a considerable
	period of time, and I must say that, among our agencies, this
	one is as good as there is. We just are looking for progress as
	well as help in this area as we go forward with our hearings.
	So I appreciate very much your participation.
	Mrs. Meek. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
	Mr. Goldin. Mr. Lewis, could I just add one point, if I
	might?
	Mr. Lewis. Certainly.
	Mr. Goldin. We have a real problem at NASA, and I don't
	know what the solution is. Because we don't want to have forced
	layoffs, which I think will destroy the morale of the agency,
	we put in a hiring freeze. We could only hire for specific
	skills.
	Because we have a hiring freeze, we can't bring new people
	in, in very large numbers, and this creates an additional
	problem in diversifying the work force.
	We are worried at NASA-Kennedy because, if people lose the
	morale there, we could have a safety problem. So we are going
	to try and get this thing done in the next 2 years, and about 3
	years from now, I anticipate NASA is going to start hiring
	again in significant numbers.
	So we want to work with you to see how we could do the
	things the best. Mr. Stokes is not shy. When we are not doing
	well, he lets us know, and I think it is in the interest of the
	agency, and I make the same offer to you. If you think we are
	missing the boat, let us know, tell us openly, and we will try
	and respond.

	interim control module (icm)

	Mr. Lewis. We appreciate that very much, Mr. Goldin.
	Mr. Director, there has been some discussion of using a
	satellite module developed by the Naval Research Lab that you
	referred to earlier as an interim control module to cover a gap
	caused by the delay and completion of the Russian service
	module. I have a series of questions in connection with that.
	For the record, what capability would the NRL option have,
	and how does that capability compare to the capability of the
	completed service module?
	Mr. Goldin. Let me say this. This is in flux, also, and I
	will answer it with the understanding that----
	Mr. Lewis. Right.
	Mr. Goldin [continuing]. We have some possibilities.
	It has the capacity of performing attitude control and
	station keeping, I believe, through the completion of Flight
	7A. Right now, it is not refuelable, although we are looking at
	that as a possibility, but in its present state, it has about 1
	year's worth of fuel aboard. So it would not be reusable. So,
	if we used that and we did not have the service module, about
	every year, we would have to launch a new interim control
	module.
	If it can be refuelable, it gives us more capacity, but it
	still might not have the forces necessary to perform the
	complete functions of the service module and compulsion.
	The service module also has life support systems for crew
	habitability. The ICM does not.
	Mr. Lewis. To extend on that a bit, could the NRL option be
	modified to become a permanent replacement for the Russian
	service module?
	Mr. Goldin. Well, one of the things we are looking at is
	can we get refuelability.
	Mr. Lewis. Correct.
	Mr. Goldin. We also have to understand the limitations.
	We think if we had to build a permanent replacement, we
	would have to go to the next step, and that is a propulsion
	module, which has got more offset for the thrusters. So you
	get, in effect, more torque to do the roll control maneuver,
	and it has a longer life system, something that could last 10
	years, designed for that.
	We are talking to the people at NASA-Marshall and at the
	Naval Research Lab, and maybe they might coordinate together
	and even buy one small piece of hardware from the Russians.
	Another possibility is, we are talking to our international
	partners about offsets. They will owe us money or goods and
	services for things we do for them, and one of the other
	possibilities is working with one of our international partners
	to have them build a propulsion module in lieu of handing us
	money for the operations phase of the program.
	So, again, we are trying to get the very best deal for the
	taxpayers.
	Mr. Lewis. Well, if you would expand on that for the record
	relative to the technical questions and the schedule
	implications, as well as the cost challenges involved.
	Mr. Goldin. I will be pleased to do that.
	Mr. Lewis. With pursuing the NRL----
	Mr. Goldin. Oh, I am sorry. I want to stand corrected. The
	interim control module, if we could refuel it, could go through
	10A----
	Mr. Lewis. Okay.
	Mr. Goldin [continuing]. Not 7A.
	Mr. Lewis. Would pursuing the NRL option allow first and
	second element launches to stay on schedule? If not, when would
	the first two elements launch?
	Mr. Goldin. If we do not have the service module, one of
	the considerations in making a decision should we launch on
	time or not is if the service module would be available as
	early as October of '98 with a very high degree of confidence.
	That might be one of the considerations in launching it on
	time, but if we do not have the service module, I would say the
	probability is that we would not launch on time.
	Now, as for the interim control module, NRL has told us if
	we keep the design as is, they think they could get it in orbit
	sometime between August and October, and if we would launch the
	interim control module in October, it would be my sense that we
	would probably not launch the FGB until June.
	Again, this is very preliminary, and I don't want to say we
	are doing that, but in the spirit of the question you asked, I
	wanted to give you a sense of what might happen.
	Mr. Lewis. I repeat, as we discussed this in private
	conversations, nonetheless, we need this sense for the public
	on the record. So I appreciate that.
	Mr. Goldin. Absolutely.

	fgb design modifications

	Mr. Lewis. The Russians have proposed building a second FGB
	using the configuration of the first element, but with
	significant modifications. Construction of the service module
	would continue as a permanent habitat, control, and reuse
	component. What modifications would be required to the FGB
	design to make it an interim solution to the service module
	construction delay that comes along?
	Mr. Goldin. If I could make a list of what we would like--
	--
	Mr. Lewis. Yes.
	Mr. Goldin [continuing]. But if we haven't verified that we
	could have it, we want it to be refuelable, which it is not. We
	would like it to have larger thrusters so it could handle roll
	control. As you are flying along, roll is this direction here.
	We would like for it to have software capability, not
	hardwired in, but continually upgradeable from the ground
	because the different mass properties of the Space Station
	change as you add additional pieces of hardware, and at the
	present, the FGB couldn't handle those changes. Those would be
	the first ordered changes that we are looking at right now.
	Mr. Lewis. Does this proposal have any impact on the
	revised schedule for completion of the service module?
	Mr. Goldin. If we were to build the FGB-II, there would be
	no impact to schedule. It is looking more and more like FGB-II
	is not the right thing to do.
	Again, a decision hasn't been made, but our Russian
	partners said to us they don't have the industrial capacity to
	build a service module and the FGB-II in parallel because both
	of them contain almost the same subsystems.
	So they said to us it is their desire that we back off on
	the request to them to build the FGB-II. So I don't think it is
	real.
	Now, if we modify the FGB-I, there is no question that the
	initial launch date for first element launch looks----
	Mr. Lewis. Okay. Following up just one more time, what
	would be the cost of this proposal, and what, if any, changes
	to the first and second element launch would be required? Who
	made that decision?
	Mr. Goldin. If we modify the FGB-I, I don't have the
	number, but a best assessment is tens of millions of dollars.
	The FGB-II is hundreds of millions of dollars.
	Mr. Lewis. Yes.
	Mr. Goldin. Again, we haven't negotiated. We haven't solved
	the technical problems. Our best assessment today is if we
	modify the FGB-I, it would be ready for launch in about June of
	1998. That is a nominal date. So that would mean, if that was
	the case, the first element launch would slip by 7 months.

	new proposal fgb-i modifications

	Mr. Lewis. Okay. Focussing a bit on FGB-I, modifications in
	the new proposal that has surfaced, there would be
	modifications required that involve the first element, I
	gather. What are the nature of those modifications of that
	first element?
	Mr. Goldin. Of the FGB-I?
	Mr. Lewis. FGB-I.
	Mr. Goldin. They would be very similar to the modifications
	we would have to do to the basic design to the FGB-II, as I
	described earlier.
	Mr. Lewis. Okay, but what schedule changes would there be?
	Mr. Goldin. Here they are.
	Mr. Lewis. Okay, yes. You mentioned attitude controls.
	Mr. Goldin. Do you want to just clarify, Wil?
	Mr. Trafton. Wil Trafton, Associate Administrator for Space
	Flight.
	We would be talking to the Russians about improving
	attitude control, refuelable capability, CMG, the saturation,
	control moment gyro desaturation, the ability to reboost the
	station, and backup command and control; in other words, the
	ability to control the FGB from Houston rather than Moscow.
	Mr. Lewis. If we were involved in that, describe to me what
	would happen to the schedule as a result of those
	modifications.
	Mr. Goldin. It is as I stated. It would be, if we move
	ahead with modifying the FGB-I to do these things, we think
	right now--we haven't verified it--it would be on the order of
	7 months.
	By the way, you asked me a question about cost.
	Mr. Lewis. Yes.
	Mr. Goldin. I would like to just share with you the fact
	that we intend to do what we said we were going to do at NASA,
	and we committed to build this Space Station to $17.4 billion
	and live with a $2.1-billion funding cap. We also feel that
	there are things that are beyond our control. If you will
	recollect, we saved $2 billion by having the Russians come into
	the program and save a year and a half in the process.
	We have had a Russian funding line that measured at about
	$100 million a year through 1997. We would like to explore the
	possibility with the Congress on this issue to extend that
	Russian funding line to cover these contingencies that are well
	beyond our ability to control and would create unbelievable
	difficulties for the NASA engineers and scientists.
	Mr. Lewis. We have discussed that as well, but I appreciate
	having that on the record, too.
	Mr. Goldin. I did want to put that on the record.

	modification costs

	Mr. Lewis. The first element FGB is being constructed under
	contract with the U.S. prime contractor. Would the U.S. be
	expected to pay for the modifications that we are talking about
	or are the Russians proposing to cover those costs?
	Mr. Goldin. That is a negotiation.
	Mr. Lewis. That kind of leads to my----
	Mr. Goldin. Could I just clarify another point to make it
	clear?
	Mr. Lewis. Sure.
	Mr. Goldin. I want to make it clear. NASA is not asking for
	any additional money in the budget. NASA is not asking to break
	any caps. This is not even a proposal. We clearly have to work
	everything we are doing with the Administration. We have to
	work everything with the Congress. So I just want to emphasize,
	this is just a thought process now that we are exploring.
	Mr. Lewis. Just to comment, as I close my questions in this
	subject area, I wasn't surprised that you made that comment one
	more time, and I expect to hear it several other times during
	the hearing, but I appreciate it.
	Mr. Goldin. Well, we want to do what we say we are going to
	do, and I am willing to sign up the budgets that are lower than
	the year before, and I want everyone to understand how serious
	we will take our commitment and we will do everything humanly
	possible to live within that.

	administrator goldin's visit to russia

	Mr. Lewis. I am most interested in focussing even more
	directly over time here with your visit to the Russians in
	April. There is little question that we, the committee, need to
	help in drawing this very firm line, relative to both time
	schedule, design, participation, cost. We all want the Russians
	to participate in this partnership, but, indeed, we do expect
	them to be accountable in the process.
	Mr. Goldin. I agree with you. I come from a world where
	accountability is everything. I don't mind being accountable as
	long as I am responsible, and a deal is a deal is a deal.
	I can't begin to tell you my level of frustration. I am not
	angry at the Russians. I am sympathetic, but I know how hard
	our people have worked. We got people working day and night to
	hold a schedule. We have overcome unbelievable problems for
	almost 4 years now. For 3\1/2\ years, we have held schedule, we
	have held budget, we have held cost cap, and that is so
	important to the morale at NASA. We want to prove to this
	Nation that we can do a major complicated program and do what
	we said we are going to do. We are frustrated.
	Mr. Lewis. I understand.
	Mr. Goldin. George Abbey has meetings every Saturday with
	everybody. We get together with all our people. I have gone
	down to the different NASA centers. I have been to them, talked
	to the people. The morale is great. We want to do this, but
	saying that, we have got to get our Russian friends to deal
	with the situation.
	I want to make it clear. I don't believe the Russian Space
	Agency has done anything wrong. They just don't get money. We
	need to work with them and the Russian government to make sure
	they get the money.
	Now, I will do everything possible because--another point I
	want to make is, there is a tremendous pride in Russia, and
	when people have a pride, they perform. If they lose their
	pride, they begin to do things that are not terrific. I think
	we ought to stick with the positive, but I still want to come
	back and say we are reaching a point now where we have to know
	is the money arriving or is it not arriving, and we need the
	assurances from the highest level of the Russian government,
	and we intend in the weeks ahead, not months or years, to get
	that understanding and then make a decision.
	Mr. Lewis. Well, Mr. Director, I don't know if it is
	appropriate for you to have these discussions, but as you do
	approach that one more time, a line in the sand, some of us
	have to be willing to ask questions about submarines versus
	other priorities within Russia as we build this alliance and
	hopefully see progress in the months and the years ahead.
	Mr. Stokes?

	diversity at nasa

	Mr. Stokes. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
	Mr. Chairman, let me also welcome my good friend, Mr.
	Wicker, to our subcommittee. Mr. Wicker and I now serve on two
	subcommittees together, and it is a pleasure to have you on
	this one.
	Mr. Wicker. It is hard to make it to all the hearings.
	Mr. Stokes. It is. In fact, I haven't gotten back over
	there again today. Hopefully, I will get over there in a few
	moments.
	Mr. Administrator, let me go back for a moment to our
	discussion of this morning, and let me pick up on a comment
	made by my chairman, Mr. Lewis, and for your benefit, also,
	Mrs. Meek.
	There is no question, but that Mr. Goldin has demonstrated
	a commitment towards diversity which I have never seen in any
	of his predecessors. I think that he would be the first to
	admit that in spite of the enormous changes that he has brought
	to the agency in that respect, they still have a long way to
	go.
	He has certainly changed the staffing that sits here in
	this room to make it look much more like America. He has found
	some highly qualified minorities around the country and put
	them in some very key positions, and that is one of the
	problems I am having this year. That is why I want us to be
	very candid, Mr. Goldin, because knowing of your commitment and
	knowing of your rhetoric in this respect, I am having trouble
	matching it to the budget that you have before us.
	For instance, this morning when we talked, you are still
	looking at how you can find another $8 to $10 million to
	confront the challenge that we discussed about minorities and
	women.
	In this budget, I see a $26-million increase requested for
	the high-performance computing and communication effort, which
	includes $10 million for the next generation of the Internet.
	I see a $37.5-million increase, 21.6 percent for the
	advanced subsonic technology, another $9-million increase
	requested for general aviation propulsion systems, just to name
	a few.
	Then, of course, as we talked about the proposal to invest
	up to a half-a-billion dollars over the next 5 years and the
	programming request, we are talking about finding that kind of
	money for an unbudgeted effort, while we can't find the $10
	million to protect a significant part of the work force. So I
	am just concerned about how aggressively we are in terms of
	this budget pursuing these areas.

	minority university research

	Let me ask you this. Your budget documents indicate that
	one of the major reasons why the agency requested less funding
	this year for minority university research relates to high
	uncosted balances. NASA indicates this is especially the case
	for grants administered by headquarters.
	What has NASA done to remedy this situation, and tell us
	why they didn't do it sooner?
	Mr. Goldin. First, let me say that the actual NASA budget
	from last year to this year is coming down $200 million, and we
	are on a glide path to come down another $300 million after
	that. So, on average, we have to tighten across the board. So
	there are areas you pointed out that are going up, but there
	are areas that are going down.
	Now, with regards to the issue that I brought up this
	morning, this is an issue that came up after the budget was
	submitted. I mean, this is something that has happened in real
	time now. We just made this decision Monday of this week. We
	had been working on it for about a month.
	So we are going to solve that problem. It is just that it
	happened after this point in time. I want you to understand
	that.
	Now, with regards to the uncosted carryover, we have a
	problem at NASA not just with the minority universities, but
	with almost all our grants to universities. We have two parts
	of the problem. We, NASA, have not done a stellar job in
	processing the grants, and in fact, we just transitioned that
	from NASA headquarters to NASA-Goddard. We had to do it
	manually. Now we are going to make it electronic to go faster.
	The second part of the problem is the universities are
	really not set up to bill us in a timely fashion, and as a
	result, we build up this big backlog. This problem is even more
	prevalent at the major research universities. They work on a
	yearly basis, and if they have to start the year without
	knowing that the money is there, they can't sign on a college
	professor. So they like the concept of having carryover, so in
	case the appropriations process is delayed, they have money to
	pay their people. This is a real serious problem that we have
	to work with them, not beat them up. So we are going to work
	the problem from both sides of the direction.
	One, we, NASA, will do a better job in processing the
	paperwork to get it out faster, and then we have to get the
	universities to bill us in a timely fashion so we could pay the
	bills.
	What we are doing is holding people accountable, not just
	for maintaining the budgets without overrun. This is what also
	I was talking about this morning, but we want accurate, timely
	expenditure of the funds.
	Now, there is a corollary to that which is bad. If you tell
	people, go spend the funds because they are going to measure
	you, they may spend the funds in a dumb manner. You have to be
	very careful in how you exercise this. So we are trying to put
	in controls.
	Let me give you an example. I went out to NASA-Johnson
	about 2 years ago, and I asked them how they were spending
	their funds for computers. In mid-August, they found they had
	some extra money. So they went out and bought 500 computers
	because they had to spend every nickel they had. This is not
	what we want.
	So it is a double-edged sword, and that is why I have
	hesitated to jump on our people and say do it or anyone is bad.
	So we, NASA, have this problem, and NASA at the universities,
	minority universities and people universities, and this is the
	next step in the reform process of trying to understand it.
	Mr. Stokes. But in light of your own admission that NASA is
	partly at fault here, aren't you still punishing the program?
	Mr. Goldin. Right now they have adequate resources to do
	everything we committed to. I don't believe we are punishing
	the program. I think we are trying to force an awareness on
	people, and at NASA, it is equal opportunity on awareness.
	We have taken money for uncosted away from a broad range of
	people, and to a certain sense, yes, the Administrator is
	sending a message. Yes, I accept the criticism. I am sending a
	message, and we were not overdoing it, but we are trying to get
	people's attention, and one way of getting attention is taking
	some budget away, and next year, I think they will do a better
	job.

	cardiac imaging in space

	Mr. Stokes. You might be getting people's attention from
	Jerry Lewis.
	Just one further question, if I have any more time, Mr.
	Chairman. What is the status of the $4 million provided last
	year in the science, aeronautics, and technology account for
	cardiac imaging?
	Mr. Goldin. We have a proposal in from the Cleveland Clinic
	in that area to develop cardiac imaging in space because we
	need that for the health of our astronauts. That is under peer
	review in the month of March, and as soon as we get the peer
	review done, because it must be peer-reviewed to make sure it
	is leading edge research, if the peer review community says it
	is acceptable, it will be funded.
	Mr. Stokes. Thank you, Mr. Administrator.
	Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
	Mr. Lewis. Thank you, Mr. Stokes.
	Mr. Knollenberg.

	government-owned versus private sector owned

	Mr. Knollenberg. Mr. Chairman, thank you.
	Back to the--I don't think we have asked this question yet,
	and if we have covered some ground, you can interrupt me, but
	on the reusable launch vehicle and the X-33, my colleague, Mr.
	Frelinghuysen, has a picture of it here, and it does look as we
	have seen before.
	It is interesting. I think this appeared in the Post
	sometime back, but I think your effort is to move it from being
	a NASA-owned and -operated item to something that perhaps the
	sector will eventually take over and become the force.
	How--or maybe I should say--where are you in terms of
	reaching your goal of moving in that direction, and maybe, when
	can we expect, again, with the best telescope you have, the
	private sector taking over totally of the ownership?
	Mr. Goldin. Let me say this. This is quite risky. This is
	an experiment not just in technology, but in management and
	trust. It is not guaranteed to work, and if you read a recent
	issue of Fortune magazine--no, Forbes--NASA was criticized for
	doing this. Some of the people in the money business said it is
	hopeless, it will never happen, but Daniel Webster said why go
	west of the Mississippi River, it is a barren wasteland full of
	savages and wild beasts. We don't listen to those people.
	Mr. Lewis. You found out he was right.
	Mr. Goldin. So you will find people who are opposed to
	this, but at some point in time, you have to say we can't
	continue going on the way we are going on, where we always
	relied on the Federal Government to do everything.
	I view the role of the Federal Government, as the President
	has asked me to do, as retiring risk on things you can't go to
	the investment community to get money on, and after the risk is
	reduced, to get the Government out of the way and let the
	commercial sector take over and give the commercial sector an
	opportunity to make lots of money or to fail.
	Now, part of the problem is, when the commercial sector
	does business with everyone other than Uncle Sam, they have
	that opportunity to fail. If this experiment is going to
	succeed, we have to give our commercial contractors the
	opportunity to fail, and this is another part of the problem.
	It may cause such anxiety in those who do business solely with
	the U.S. Government cause for concern if we are not supportive.
	Mr. Knollenberg. Are you getting any encouragement from the
	private sector, the commercial side?
	Mr. Goldin. I want to tell you, I think that the Lockheed-
	Martin company is incredibly courageous. Their CEO and
	chairman, Norm Augustine, is personally involved. He comes to
	our meetings. The chairman of the Boeing company, Phil Condin,
	who is a subcontractor to Lockheed-Martin, is involved. He
	comes to meetings. Larry Bosity, the CEO of Allied Signal, he
	comes to the review meetings.
	They are not only working on building the vehicle at the
	skunkworks, but they are also looking at working with the
	investment community.
	Now, it may fail, but we are going to go down swinging, and
	my sense is I think we have a good chance of doing
	itdifferently, and it may be that we may need some statutory language
	from the Congress when we understand this better to facilitate the
	process. It may be in the area of making multi-year commitments if we
	could just become a commercial customer. Right now we can't do that. So
	those are the things that will have to happen.
	Mr. Knollenberg. The liability exposure would be one that
	will be immense, I would think, in terms of the private sector,
	assuming that.
	Mr. Goldin. Right. There is just a simple issue. Right now
	we--I don't know what the right term is. We cover the cost in
	case a launch vehicle veers off course and creates some
	collateral damage, third-party liability. We are trying to
	wrestle this with the contractor. They are going to be
	completely responsible for a vehicle that is going to fly over
	populated areas. This is a nontrivial issue. So it is more than
	a technical issue, but I think that it is stimulating.
	I have been talking to some of the leaders in the
	investment community, not involved in space. They are very
	excited about this, and we are really trying to do something
	different. Like I said, we feel stronger when people tell us we
	are going to fail.
	Mr. Knollenberg. Let me ask you about another. This is kind
	of like, I would say, in the direction of maybe the absurd and
	the bizarre, but it is a question that is beginning to get some
	currency or a subject because of the asteroid influence.
	Mr. Goldin. Yes, sir.

	near-earth asteroid tracking

	Mr. Knollenberg. I note--and I don't know how much money
	you are spending when I ask that question, but I note in the
	budget, there is money at least for NEAR. Is there money also
	for NEAT? I presume that is the outgrowth of----
	Mr. Goldin. Near-Earth Asteroid Tracking, NEAT.
	Mr. Knollenberg. Right.
	Mr. Goldin. And the answer is yes. We have funding in three
	different programs. It is a total of $1.2 million a year, for
	all three programs and supporting activities.
	Mr. Knollenberg. Over how many years?
	Mr. Goldin. Twenty years.
	Mr. Knollenberg. Twenty years?
	Mr. Goldin. And on the geological time scale, it is not
	big, but on the anxiety time scale for many Americans, it is
	too long.
	I have talked to Wes Huntress, who is here, Dr. Huntress,
	about this. We are now using Air Force facilities on Haleakala,
	Hawaii, but we only get so much viewing time per year. So we
	are now talking to the Air Force. We are having discussions
	with them of using and getting more time at this facility and
	bringing other facilities on line.
	We are bringing two new telescopes on line in Arizona, one
	in Tucson and one at the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff. Now,
	these are not the big telescopes because, if you want a wide
	field, you use the smaller telescopes; but NASA is developing
	electronics to go with those telescopes that could make it go
	faster.
	We have a second problem that we have lost our ability to
	search for Near-Earth objects from the southern hemisphere. All
	the telescopes we are using are in the northern hemisphere. So
	we are looking at working with the National Science Foundation
	in the southern hemisphere. We are trying to bring other
	countries into it.
	I share your sense of concern. Now, when we first started,
	it looked like it was going to cost $100 million. We can't just
	grow money problems. We now have it down to $25 million, and
	now I have to trade. Do we want to try and do it faster and
	spend a little bit more money? We owe you an answer to this
	question, but I heard you were going to ask this question. It
	got my attention.
	Wes Huntress was in my office this morning, and we are
	going to see how to accelerate it.
	Mr. Knollenberg. Very good. I know it is one that got a lot
	of attention, and obviously, it is one that has some capability
	to it, and I think already you have identified what is close to
	10 percent of the larger objects?
	Mr. Goldin. Yes.
	Mr. Knollenberg. So it is the little guys that are still
	out there.
	Mr. Goldin. We want to get 90 percent of all objects, 1
	kilometer or larger in diameter.

	commercialization

	Mr. Lewis. Thank you, Mr. Knollenberg.
	Mrs. Meek, if you would bear with me for a moment. Before
	we get too far away from commercialization, the September 1996
	National Space Policy states that the U.S. Government shall
	purchase commercially available space goods and services to the
	fullest extent possible and shall not conduct activities which
	may preclude or deter commercial and space activities.
	The policy also encourages the use of innovative
	procedures, procurement methods. First, have any U.S.
	commercial firms been asked by NASA to build portions of the
	Space Station in return for that firm being given a portion of
	the utilization of the----
	Mr. Goldin. To the best of my knowledge, we don't know of
	one firm that is willing to put up the money to build the
	equipment in return for utilization.
	Mr. Lewis. Have we asked them?
	Mr. Goldin. We have talked to many, many firms.
	Wil?
	Mr. Trafton. Specifically, I have asked two companies in
	U.S. industry, and they were not interested.
	Mr. Goldin. Let me be a little controversial at this
	point----
	Mr. Lewis. Please do.
	Mr. Goldin [continuing]. And say that we have a real
	problem, and it gets back to the question that Mr. Knollenberg
	asked about what is commercialization of space.
	There are a whole bunch of people who view
	commercialization of space as they will go to the bank, get a
	loan, build the equipment, and then want NASA to guarantee 100-
	percent return on their money. That is not commercialization.
	That is subsidization.
	When people come and talk to me about commercialization, I
	ask them--to me, commercialization is ready to take risk. We,
	NASA, are prepared to move with anyone that wants to do
	commercial activities, that is, buy equipment, get the
	utilization space, and not come back and say, NASA, we want you
	to buy all this commercialization space back or 70 percent of
	it, because even at that, why should we pay for venture capital
	money when we could go get Government financing?
	I am very concerned about this issue, and I would like to
	believe we are going to have a commercial industry, but those
	who always are going to come back to Uncle Sam are going to
	have a very tough customer at NASA.
	Mr. Lewis. I am very appreciative of that, and frankly, the
	more we can push the industry to the forefront of helping us
	with this very difficult task, the better.
	You have done a very fine job of communicating with our
	partners, our international partners in Europe, et cetera. I am
	interested as we broaden the numbers at the table, talk about
	commercialization, to know what I don't know about what is
	happening with our Latin neighbors.

	international cooperation

	Is it NASA's decision to enter into international
	agreements with Brazil for a portion of the Space Station,
	consistent with the commercialization policies?
	Mr. Goldin. I think it is more consistent to keeping the
	cost under the cap. We will do whatever it takes to meet our
	commitment within the law, and Brazil approached us. I went
	down to Brazil to sign an agreement with them, a cooperative
	agreement in space. They are so excited about working on the
	Space Station. They said if we would consider it, they would
	put up cash just in return for some utilization fund.
	Mr. Lewis. Can you describe their participation?
	Mr. Goldin. I have to tell you, it is an unpressurized
	logistics rack, is the main part of it, but it is mainly the
	unpressurized logistics rack as their main activity, and then
	perhaps a window or a cupola for the Space Station.
	We are in the process of talking to them. There is no deal
	yet.
	Mr. Lewis. When I heard about this, I was thinking about
	our international partners. I know about your effort to get
	industry involved, and I am wondering about the rest of our
	Latin neighbors. I would like to know what I don't know about
	that, their interest and otherwise.
	Mr. Goldin. By the way, we are working directly with the
	U.S. They would not become a partner on the broader sense of
	the station.
	We are working not as fast as I would like us to work to
	provide opportunity to other countries to participate, and John
	Schumacher, who is head of--I have asked John to reach out a
	little bit more. Countries want to work with America. This is a
	real opportunity, and they want to bring money, which I think
	is also very, very important.
	Mr. Lewis. Well, Europe has demonstrated the values of
	nations working together as well.
	Mr. Goldin. It is terrific.
	Mr. Lewis. To our neighbors to the south, I am scratching
	my head about that, but I don't know----
	Mr. Goldin. We are going to look at it more.
	I would like to come back to the issue of commercial space
	to let you know that we are very, very serious. As
	Administrator, I am getting personally involved in talking to
	the investment community, and we are trying to see if it is
	possible to build a space venture fund.
	One of the problems with people going into the commercial
	business is that the gestation time for turning profits around
	is too short. They need to turn their profits around in 2 or 3
	years so they can break even and then start making money, and
	they have to be willing to take a tremendous amount of risk
	when private capital is involved.
	So we are trying to explore the boundaries around how we
	could build a space venture fund where we could allow for
	profit turnaround in 5 to 10 years, instead of 2 to 3 years,
	and be able to afford more risk.
	I think if we could build such a fund and bring non-
	Government management into it, some of these people that manage
	the standard venture capital funds, I think we will do a lot
	for real commercial space. We are now restructuring some of the
	work at the agency to try and make this happen where we will be
	a catalyst and facilitator, but people won't view us as a
	customer.
	Now, I know this is difficult for some because there are a
	lot of people that want to work with the agency, and we will
	transfer technology, but I have looked at 20 years of
	commercialization, and we haven't got there. We have got to do
	it differently, and we have got to change their mind-set about
	people coming up to Capitol Hill with lizard briefcases and
	patent leather shoes selling the work to the NASA people. They
	ought to be selling it to the private sector, and by the way,
	the NASA Administrator's office.
	Mr. Lewis. I personally very much appreciate the entire
	thrust of this discussion.
	Mrs. Meek?

	privatization

	Mrs. Meek. My question is very generic. It kind of follows
	up on one of your interests. What I am hearing around the
	table, and I am new to this committee, it appears as if because
	of the circumstances you find yourselves in, plus your
	philosophy, you might go toward privatizing some of the many
	things you are doing. Is that correct?
	Mr. Goldin. As fast as we can, and I would prefer doing
	more commercializing than privatizing, but right now we are
	pretty well limited to privatizing.

	international negotiations

	Mrs. Meek. Now, I understand that not only have you--well,
	you have consummated your relationship with Russia, but you
	have been talking to other countries or they have been talking
	to you, Japan, some other countries in Europe. What is the
	extent of your negotiations with them, and are they into the
	program, or will they be into it?
	Mr. Goldin. Let me tell you, Japan, Canada, and Europe are
	into the program to the tune of almost $10 billion. They are
	wonderful partners.
	While we are looking for new partners, I would like to take
	this opportunity to say that the Europeans, Canadians, and
	Japanese are wonderful partners. They are committing a lot of
	money, and they are working with us very cooperatively.
	Mrs. Meek. This is just a humorous question. I was around
	during World War II.
	Mr. Lewis. Oh, now wait a minute.
	Mrs. Meek. I was around. I was around. Now, you are sharing
	some of our great ballistic kinds of technology and whatever
	with all of these countries, and I am just wondering if you
	ever thought about to what extent that could be used.
	Mr. Goldin. Let me say this.
	Mrs. Meek. That is a grandmother question.
	Mr. Goldin. We protect all national security technologies.
	We work closely with the Department of Defense, Department of
	State.
	When we work with countries, generally, it is a cooperative
	effort. In the case of the Japanese, they are developing their
	own technology in rocketry. They are putting their money in
	with their contractors to supply equipment to the Space
	Station, same with the Europeans.
	We do not transfer knowingly any critical technology
	necessary to the defense of this Nation or any technologies
	critical to our economy. We have procedures in place to prevent
	that from happening.
	Mrs. Meek. Thank you.
	Mr. Lewis. Thank you, Mrs. Meek.
	Mrs. Meek. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

	benefits from russia

	Mr. Lewis. Mr. Director, before calling on my next
	colleague, you concluded a piece of your remarks regarding
	Russia and some of the difficulties we are facing with the
	reality that we have gained an awful lot by the dealings that
	we have had with them up until now, the great benefits
	technologically and otherwise. I think it is very important for
	all of us to recognize that there is that very positive element
	that we cannot afford to overlook.
	Mr. Goldin. I want to tell you, the Russians know a lot
	about people in space because they have had them in space for
	10 years straight.
	Mr. Lewis. Yes.
	Mr. Frelinghuysen?

	x-33/laser program

	Mr. Frelinghuysen. Yes. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
	I just want to clarify a response you gave earlier relative
	to the X-33. Kathy Sawyer's article in the Science Aeronautics
	section of the Washington Post earlier in the month, and I
	quote, says, ``The project''--and this is the last paragraph--
	``is scrambling''--referring to the X-33--``to meet a tight
	schedule. The X-33 is it be completed by late 1998.'' I don't
	know whether you have seen the article, but I assume that the
	article is put together relative----
	Mr. Goldin. I don't know if ``completed'' is accurate, but
	it flies March of 1999.
	Mr. Frelinghuysen. If flies.
	Mr. Goldin. March of 1999.
	Mr. Frelinghuysen. Well, actually, it says in the article
	here relative to that, and I quote, ``After repeated delays
	caused by equipment and other problems, the engineers hope
	finally to fly----
	Mr. Goldin. Oh, I am sorry.
	Mr. Frelinghuysen [continuing]. For the first time next
	summer.'' I assume that is the summer of----
	Mr. Goldin. Oh, okay. That is the LASER experiment. The X-
	33 is scheduled to fly in March of '99. We have an experiment
	called LASER which we are going to fly on the SR-71, which is a
	plane that travels at Mach 3.1. On the back of this plane, we
	are going to put this package which is a small-scale version of
	the aerospike engine to get some data before we have to put it
	on the actual launch vehicle.
	I got to say that we, NASA, and the contractors do not
	bathe ourselves in glory, and we did a sloppy job, and it is
	late because of poor performance on the part of NASA and the
	contractors.
	Mr. Frelinghuysen. So there is a relation, but the time
	table for X-33 is 1999?
	Mr. Goldin. We just want to do that as soon as possible so,
	if we find the problem, we could fix it before we fly the X-33.

	POTOMAC INSTITUTE STUDY

	Mr. Frelinghuysen. Director, there have been some newspaper
	articles relative to the study you funded with the Potomac
	Institute. The Potomac Institute, I guess, is in Arlington, and
	they have recently released a report on your commercialization
	efforts.
	The quotation that struck me from the newspaper from Mr.
	James Richardson was--and he is vice president of Research for
	the Institute, quote, ``NASA should normalize human orbital
	space flight by spinning off mature space operations to
	commercial operators which is encouraging non-aerospace
	customers of these assets. We see this strategy as a way out of
	NASA's long-term budget crunch,'' unquote. Could you comment on
	the study?
	I know you funded it. You spent what, $370,000?
	Mr. Goldin. We gave away $400,000. We gave away in a grant
	without any control. This is okay. Here is my problem. I love
	what he said. As soon as we get someone with enough courage to
	step up and commercialize space and not abuse the Federal
	Government, we are ready to do it, and as to the gentlemen who
	did the study, could show me someone that is ready to put their
	own capital in and not require Government money, we are ready
	to rock and roll.
	Mr. Frelinghuysen. So this gets back to what you said
	earlier, quite passionately, is that if people are willing to
	put their money up and absorb the risk of putting their capital
	forward.
	Mr. Goldin. What they call commercialization is someone
	will go to the bank and get money, take over the operation, and
	then have us give them a lot of money to pay back all their
	interest. We are not interested in doing that.
	Now, we are faulty in one area. Space is too expensive to
	get to, and by the way, I don't want to criticize the people
	that want to be real commercial advocates of space. We, NASA,
	have not done a good job. We, the American Government, have not
	done a good job in getting the cost of the launch down. That
	$10,000 a pound is pretty hard to commercialize space with a
	shuttle that flies only seven times a year with predetermined
	payloads. It is hard to commercialize space.
	It is crucial to open a space frontier to get a low-cost
	access to space with high reliability. It is going to be a
	theoretical issue until we make that happen. So, guilty as
	charged, we have not lowered the threshold for getting into
	space and made the reliability high, and what we do is keep
	dividing up the assets of the shuttle and doing different
	things, but until we get the costs down, we are not going to
	make it happen.
	The second part of the problem is people who want to fly
	technology transfer commercial experiments on the shuttle--and
	there, we have a lot of them. Pharmaceutical companies want to
	do drug research on the shuttle in the station. There are
	material companies that want to do work. We, NASA, spend too
	much time getting those payloads ready, and I think we have to
	improve it.
	And then we have a third problem. As we are building the
	Space Station, because we only have the space shuttle that we
	could afford to fly seven, eight times a year, we don't have
	adequate access to space for some of these folks, and in that
	sense, I accept the criticism of NASA.
	Mr. Frelinghuysen. Your predecessor quoted--a quotation was
	attributed to your predecessor relative to this study. I
	presume you read that quotation.
	Mr. Goldin. No.
	Mr. Frelinghuysen. Let me just read it to you and get your
	reaction to it. Mr. Beggs, former NASA administrator, is quoted
	in the New York Times--this was on February 8th--as saying, and
	I quote, ``The billions of dollars spent in man's space flights
	since the 1960's, if it had been used to build an organization
	to put payloads into space, it is now time,'' he said, ``to pay
	more attention to privatizing space flight, so that the
	businesses could take over the routine functions of launching
	spacecraft and running commercial enterprises in space.''
	My question is, is there a potential payoff here in terms
	of your budget? Is there some sort of a quantifiable goal if,
	in fact, we can get commercial--greater commercialization?
	Mr. Goldin. Mr. Beggs and I share the same view. I mean, I
	would love it. We have a problem. The problem is, as I stated,
	we have the shuttle, which is a wonderful machine that is too
	expensive, doesn't fly enough, and doesn't have the level of
	safety that I think we would need if we go into routine
	commercial operations.
	So, to me, the issue is dividing up the shuttle among a
	whole bunch of people that want to operate isn't going to do
	it, but let me tell you what we have done, and I am very proud
	of it. We are transitioning the shuttle from Government control
	and Government operation to a private company, the USA Company.
	They are going to be responsible for operating it safely, and
	that is how they will make profits.
	So the step one is, over the next 2 years, to transfer it
	over to there, but let me tell you what it is like being in
	Government.
	Mr. Frelinghuysen. So that is the element, the greater
	element of----
	Mr. Goldin. That is privatization.
	Mr. Frelinghuysen [continuing]. Privatization as opposed to
	commercialization.
	Mr. Goldin. We did it, amid unbelievable criticism and
	concern which I share. People felt that NASA could operate it
	safer than a private company, to which I respond, if we really
	want to open the space frontier, we have got to start trusting
	private companies. We are a capitalist nation. Do you want to
	fly an aircraft, airlines managed by the Federal Government? I
	don't think so. So we have got to start the process.
	Mr. Frelinghuysen. Oh, God. Would you repeat that, please?
	Mr. Goldin. Well, I am not saying it to be funny.
	Mr. Frelinghuysen. I know.
	Mr. Goldin. You go back and read the newspapers for the
	last year or two and see the criticism that we have received at
	NASA by wanting to transition to a private company. Americans
	have learned to trust NASA for safety, but you can't have it
	both ways. You can't open the space frontier if you don't want
	to trust companies, and just because it is a private company
	wanting to make a profit doesn't mean it is unsafe. I think it
	will be safer.
	Yes, we will have problems, though. That is the first step.
	The second step is to encourage the USA Company to invest in
	upgrades because we are going to reward them 30 cents on the
	dollar for every dollar they save on $400 million in profit.
	Now, all of a sudden, capitalism kicks into the next gear.
	Then, I would like to see them start looking for some
	commercial opportunities, and the question was asked what could
	we do there. Right now, I am not sure if it is legislation or
	it is a national policy that the shuttle shouldn't do any
	commercial things.
	Now, the next thing that will happen is that we try and do
	that with the shuttle. The people that build expendable launch
	vehicles are going to try and stop us from making the shuttle
	available.
	So I submit, if the Congress is willing to roll up their
	sleeves and take on some of these issues with the NASA folks
	and the Administration, we are ready to move to the next step.
	These are the things that we are doing in real terms to try and
	make change and not make a lot of glorious statements.
	Mr. Frelinghuysen. Thank you.
	Mr. Lewis. Thank you, Mr. Frelinghuysen.
	I must say, maybe we should plug Mr. Beggs into this. I was
	intrigued by that space venture fund idea.
	Mr. Goldin. And by the way, Mr. Beggs is a real believer,
	and I want you to understand that I really salute what he is
	trying to do, and he is trying to help us.
	Mr. Lewis. Mr. Wicker.

	International Space Station Annual Cap

	Mr. Wicker. Mr. Goldin, let's go back to the near term and
	particularly to the issue of the $2.1-billion annual cap for
	the International Space Station.
	I want to give you an opportunity to enlarge upon your
	plans for achieving that goal. How close are we in the current
	fiscal year?
	Mr. Goldin. Very. The budget is very, very tight. We are
	trying to look at each of the steps we have to take to keep a
	reserve available. We are not overrun. I don't feel the
	reserves are at the level that is adequate for handling things
	that we don't know about. In 1997 and 1998, our reserves are
	the tightest in the whole program.
	Mr. Wicker. Are you counting on reserves in later years to
	meet this goal?
	Mr. Goldin. We will always need reserves in the later years
	because you don't know what is going to happen. So we will need
	the reserves.
	Mr. Wicker. Well, if you will, you mentioned, I believe, in
	this context the Russian funding and also the Brazil
	initiatives as means of achieving the cap, staying under the
	cap. If you will, just elaborate on what your----
	Mr. Goldin. Sure.
	Mr. Wicker [continuing]. Complete contingency plan is for--
	--
	Mr. Goldin. Sure.
	Mr. Wicker [continuing]. Staying within this number.
	Mr. Goldin. Well, let me give you a couple of things we are
	doing. Right now, we are negotiating with ESA, the European
	Space Agency, to give in-kind consideration for the Europeans
	building the second node and integrating it and for building us
	a third additional node to give us more scientific capacity on
	board the station.
	We have made estimates that this could save us between $60
	and $80 million, a good portion of it coming in the present
	fiscal year. So that is a very specific step that we could
	take.
	In talking to the Brazilians, there is some range of monies
	anywhere between $30 to $50 million. This is real money that we
	don't have to spend. That helps build our reserve, also.
	We have a series of maybe 10 or 15 things that we are doing
	to rebuild the reserve. Each year, we face this problem, and
	each year, we have been able to overcome it, and the key issue
	here is we don't want to come back to the President or the
	Congress and ask for more money. So we will do everything
	possible. That is the approach we are talking.
	Mr. Wicker. I appreciate that assurance.
	Mr. Goldin. It is not a guarantee, but I want to tell you,
	there will be a lot of blood on the floor before we ever come
	back and ever consider that, and right now, I believe we are
	going to make it.
	Mr. Wicker. I would just observe, Mr. Chairman, that
	Everett Dirksen would be pleased that the director of NASA said
	that $50 billion here and $60 billion there--or $50 million.
	Mr. Goldin. Million.
	Mr. Wicker. I am getting my B's and M's mixed up. It adds
	up to real money. I am glad you subscribe to that philosophy.
	That is all.
	Mr. Lewis. Thank you very much, Mr. Wicker.
	I just wanted to mention, my staff was good enough to point
	out, or remind me, that relative to the commercialization
	discussion, the committee in its own language last year
	expressed those interests and concerns. The committee is
	concerned that NASA is seeking, on the one hand, to encourage
	commercialization of shuttle operations, while on the other
	hand, policies are in place which may have the opposite effect.
	Following the Challenger accident in 1986, a policy
	directive was issued which prohibits the use of the space
	shuttle for commercial payloads. That directive is still a
	major component of the space policy of the United States
	Government. NASA has initiated a number of measures to increase
	the commercial aspects of space transportation, but to date,
	there does not appear to have been a comprehensive review of
	the original rationale of the prohibition of commercial
	payloads to determine if it should be retained and so forth.
	You are familiar with that. We continue to raise those
	questions. I am not sure how long each of the members may be
	able to stay. We have had very good attendance in what is going
	to be and continue to be a long session, but certainly, while
	Mr. Wicker is here, I want to ask a question that is somewhere
	within the mix of my own delegation.

	Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle (EELV) Program

	Some members of the California delegation have expressed
	concern that NASA-Stennis Space Center personnel are pressuring
	Rocketdyne to shift work on the evolved expendable launch
	vehicle, EELV engine, from Edwards Rocket Site to Stennis. Does
	Stennis currently have a test stand capable of being used for
	the EELV program? I have a couple of other questions in
	connection with that.
	Mr. Goldin. Okay, good. The answer is yes. Right now, the
	plan is to test the RS-68 engine block one at Stennis, and the
	block zero engine is being tested at Phillips. If for some
	reason that engine were to be tested by NASA, it would be
	tested at a test stand, whose number I don't remember, but it
	is a four-digit number starting with 4, at NASA-Marshall. 4670.
	Mr. Lewis. Will the current and planned personnel levels at
	Stennis be able to support the EELV program?
	Mr. Goldin. We believe so, and by the way, I want to get
	something clear here. We respect what the Department of Defense
	is doing. I don't know the details of what is going on, but to
	the first order, if employees are being aggressive to try and
	get the very best deal for the Government, this is good. If
	they are being aggressive to build an empire, this is bad.
	Mr. Lewis. Correct. Correct, both of those.
	Should Stennis be looking for non-NASA work or should it
	concentrate on current NASA programs?
	Mr. Goldin. Well, this gets back to the comment I made
	about Center of Excellence. If they are going to have the very
	best propulsion test facilities in the country, if they are
	going to have the very best people for testing propulsion, and
	they have a capacity for doing more for less, they ought to
	talk to their other peer agencies, and they ought to talk to
	the companies in this country on a professional basis to see
	how we can the taxpayer the biggest benefit.

	shuttle safety and performance upgrades

	Mr. Lewis. Okay, good. Shuttle safety and performance
	upgrades. The budget requests for safety and performance
	upgrades to space shuttle is $483 million in fiscal year 1998,
	a reduction of $150 million from the 1997 level. The reduced
	funding level is spread throughout all the components of the
	program, given the criticality of these upgrades and the
	development problems being encountered in some of the efforts,
	why is the budget request being reduced?
	Mr. Goldin. Well, first, let me say that we are completing
	a number of very major efforts. The engine upgrades, although
	we still have problems with the fuel pump, the oxidizer pump is
	done. It is a Super Lightweight Tank. These are very, very
	large activities. The large throat main combustion chamber and
	the new powerhead, these are all beginning to get to
	completion, which is where we want it to be. So that is one of
	the reasons it is coming down.
	Now, we are not stopping there. I have personally asked the
	NASA people to define the next generation of supportability
	upgrades. This is a very, very complex task, and we have a
	series of upgrades we are exploring, and I would like to submit
	the details of that for the record.
	Mr. Lewis. Okay.
	Mr. Goldin. But this is a new NASA. We are not allowing
	them to go forward on that until they thoroughly understand the
	requirements, until they thoroughly understand the costs, until
	they validated the requirements and validated the costs. So
	there is a time delay in performing this function.
	Now, I also mentioned when Congresswoman Meek was here that
	we did not want this to be just a designer's activity at NASA-
	Johnson, but we wanted the operators from NASA-Kennedy
	involved, and we just put a new function together under Joanne
	Morgan. It now has, I think, 75 people. So the people that
	actually fly the shuttle are participating in this as a
	definition and a review authority. So it will take us some
	months, and we expect by the end of the year, we will have this
	very well defined, and we expect to incorporate a good portion
	of it in the fiscal 1999 budget.
	If we believe we are ready to start some activities, we are
	going to come forward with an operating plan change. We do have
	monies in our program, in our reserves, to handle the startup
	of any of these things when they are ready, but I want to come
	back and say we don't want to have cost growth of 77 percent
	anymore. So we are going to measure twice and cut once.

	multifunction electronic display system (meds)

	Mr. Lewis. The Multifunction Electronic Display System will
	replace the current cockpit displays with an integrated liquid
	crystal display system. Qualification testing has experienced a
	new delay and is now scheduled for completion in the second
	quarter of fiscal year 1997. What is causing the delay in
	completion of the qualification testing?
	Mr. Goldin. Well, NASA was required to develop a U.S.
	capability in this type of display, and we had a 99-percent
	rejection rate from the U.S. contractor. So we went overseas to
	Japan, and we are buying this from a Japanese company.
	It was very disappointing to us because we wanted the
	American company to succeed, but we got to fly the shuttle. So,
	then, after we failed with the American company, we went over
	to a Japanese company, and they are supplying the equipment.
	We had a little bit of a problem to begin with, but now we
	believe we will be able to deliver this on time.
	Mr. Lewis. What level of confidence do you have that the
	testing will be completed as currently scheduled, and what is
	the effect of the scheduled slip on initial operating
	capability?
	Mr. Goldin. We think we will have it 2 months prior, based
	upon the testing, and it is going into OV-104.
	Mr. Lewis. Okay. The Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel
	expressed concern that the MEDS required significant changes to
	both the primary flight software and backup flight software.
	Have the panel's concerns been addressed in your testing
	program?
	Mr. Goldin. Let me tell you, I think the Aerospace Advisory
	Panel is one of the most valuable tools that I have as
	administrator in managing this agency. These are a bunch of
	very smart people who leave their egos at the door. They have
	come in and they have given us some very valuable advice.
	They are absolutely right about the criticality of that
	software, and our plans have a thorough testing of the software
	as individual packages and the integration of the software with
	the hardware before fly.
	Mr. Lewis. Okay.
	Mr. Goldin. They are right.
	Mr. Lewis. Thank you.
	Mr. Goldin. By the way, there is one other recommendation
	that they made, and that was, they said the first step of MEDS
	is to just replicate the mechanical sensors, the mechanical
	indicators you had in the shuttle cockpit. They said why don't
	you make the shuttle much safer by putting in software upgrades
	now that you have MEDS.
	So, as part of this new shuttle upgrade program to make it
	safer, we are looking at something on the order of a $30-
	million investment to take us from just replicating gauges and
	dials to making the situational awareness for the pilots a much
	higher level. So, again, they were right, and we will be coming
	back in our operating plan to talk about that.

	propulsion upgrades

	Mr. Lewis. Okay, thank you.
	Two propulsion upgrades to the shuttle which are critical
	for the Space Station program are the Super Lightweight Tank
	and the Block II Space Shuttle Main Engine. Both of these
	programs are of concern to the Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel
	as well. Would you explain what has caused the slip in the
	first flight of Block II engine and what will be the effect of
	the schedule on the Space Station?
	Mr. Goldin. Lack of performance by our contractor,Pratt-
	Whitney. Everything is less than perfect, and to say the least, we are
	not happy campers.
	We had problems with the oxidizer pump, and now it is
	flying successfully on the shuttle. We won't fly until it is
	safe, and if we have to wait, we will wait here, but we believe
	that the upgrade to the shuttle is so important. We want to
	bring the large throat main combustion chamber, the new
	powerhead into service because it gives us a much greater
	design margin on launch; that what we will probably do is have
	the Block II qualification without the fuel pump. Then we will
	use the existing Rocketdyne fuel pumps, and 6 months later,
	when we get the new fuel pump, we will replace the Rocketdyne
	fuel pumps and we will have like a Block II-A qualification. So
	it will be a sequential installation, but we feel that the
	safety is so important, we don't want to wait.
	I want to be on the record that NASA is very unhappy with
	Pratt-Whitney. They are snatching defeat from the jaws of
	victory.
	Mr. Lewis. Thank you.
	Does NASA share the panel's concern about welding quality
	control operations and the production of Super Lightweight
	Tank, and what actions have been taken to address these
	concerns?
	Mr. Goldin. I am not personally fluent in this issue. There
	is some disagreement between some of the NASA people and the
	Aerospace Safety Advisory Board because it is a very
	complicated technical subject, but saying that, I have such
	respect for the board that we have asked our safety
	organization to work with the developers and bring in an
	independent panel of national experts to get an understanding
	of what is going on here, and if there is an issue, to bring it
	forward.
	Mr. Lewis. And if you would keep us apprised of that?
	Mr. Goldin. Absolutely.

	system integration

	Mr. Lewis. One more question. Funding for system
	integration is $34 million lower in fiscal year 1998 than was
	the case in fiscal year 1997. What is the rationale for this
	funding decrease when the number of planned shuttle flights
	remain the same in both years?
	Mr. Peterson. If I may answer that, sir.
	Mr. Lewis. Mr. Peterson.
	Mr. Peterson. There are two things going on currently. One
	is that in the fiscal 1997 number, we have money that is
	targeted to pay for transition cost to the space flight
	operations contract, the USA contractor, and the funding for
	that transition is heavier in 1997 than it is in 1998, and that
	accounts for about $10 million worth of difference.
	The residual is fundamentally the improved performance of
	the program over the past few years as a result of the uncosted
	carryovers being high enough so that the fiscal 1998 funding
	requirement could be reduced. So we carry over enough funding
	from 1997 into 1998 to keep the level of activity smooth, but
	the budget authority that we require is reduced.
	Mr. Lewis. Okay. Thank you.
	Mr. Frelinghuysen.

	research and flight centers

	Mr. Frelinghuysen. Mr. Goldin, just satisfy my curiosity
	here. You used the term earlier here in your comments about the
	autonomy that some of these space centers have and the research
	centers. What do you mean by that phrase? They obviously have
	to work within your overall budget parameters?
	Mr. Goldin. I think I used ``authority and
	responsibility.''
	Mr. Frelinghuysen. Well, whatever. I thought you used the
	term ``autonomy.'' I just wondered.
	Mr. Goldin. If I did, maybe--I think I was talking about
	accountability and responsibility. I don't recollect when I
	used ``autonomy.''
	Mr. Frelinghuysen. To what degree do the centers--then let
	me ask the question. To what degree do the centers, both
	research and flight centers, have autonomy?
	Mr. Goldin. Once we define the requirements and we sign a
	contract, for example, once Wil Trafton, who is the Associate
	Administrator for the Office of Space Flight, signs a contract
	with the lead center for the shuttle and the Space Station
	manager, the contract is signed.
	Within the limitations of the requirements, the budget, the
	schedule, and the technical, NASA-Johnson has complete
	authority, so long as they are doing it safely.
	If they want to make a change to the requirements, they
	have to come back to Wil Trafton to make that change, but what
	we are not doing is micro managing the centers. So autonomy
	within the bounds that we have defined, and that is the only
	autonomy that they have.
	Mr. Frelinghuysen. You have five flight centers and four
	research centers, plus headquarters.
	Mr. Goldin. Yes.
	Mr. Frelinghuysen. Mr. Hobson usually asks most of the
	agencies that come in here what are we talking about in terms
	of--we know what the payroll is in each of these centers
	because you have provided that, but what do we have relative to
	square footage? Is it owned by NASA? Is it Government property
	generally, or is it rented?
	Mr. Goldin. Well, let me tell you, one of the lessons that
	I learned in private industry is, during the very rapid
	increase of the aerospace community in the 1970's and 1980's,
	there was a tendency to do a lot of leasing of buildings. That
	really hit the overhead hard.
	So one of the things we are trying to do, as the leases
	come up, we are trying to get out of the leases because that
	cuts our operational space and comes within the boundaries of
	our facilities.
	We are also in certain cases shutting buildings down so we
	don't have to pay maintenance costs in the buildings if we
	don't need it. That is one of the things we are doing, and now,
	for the record, could supply all the square footage.
	Mr. Frelinghuysen. The goal is admirable, though statistics
	still exist.
	Mr. Goldin. Yes, they do exist.
	Mr. Frelinghuysen. And to what extent when you are
	partnering with a private enterprise, private corporation. Do
	they share in the square footage costs of whatever we are
	paying?
	Mr. Goldin. We generally have very unique facilities.
	What we try and do is, in a good commercial sense, and when
	we can do good commercialization on tech transfers, we sign
	cooperative agreements. In many cases, no money changes hands,
	and that way, they come and take advantage of the unique
	Government facilities and we get the knowledge from their
	people. Sometimes we even use their facilities, but there is
	something we are going to do, and I am not sure this committee,
	nor the NASA employees, understand the full impact of it.
	We have committed to going to full cost accounting. This
	means that we will no longer be just reporting the program
	cost, but we will now have an overhead rate at NASA, and we are
	going to require reporting on this. It is going to be pro forma
	in 1998 to get experience with it, and it is going to be part
	of our system by the end of 1999.
	Where people haven't been held accountable for a lot of the
	support functions, it is going to be very visible to us and the
	committee. I think this is going to be one of the most
	effective reform tools for the next generation of reforms at
	NASA, and we will have insight into things that we are spending
	money on that we might not have to spend.
	To say the least, the level of anxiety among the NASA
	management and employees is very high. This is new to
	Government. We have been doing it in industry since there has
	been an industry. So now we are going to be reporting an
	overhead to you.
	Mr. Frelinghuysen. So you are saying, to a certain extent,
	it doesn't exist now, but it will in the future?
	Mr. Goldin. Oh, you bet, and we will be making some very
	hard decisions based upon that.
	We could tell you a square foot, but we can't relate the
	square foot to the program. Some programs may be using five
	times the number of square feet that other programs are using.
	We only have the direct charges to NASA on the programs, but by
	program, we will know how many people are supporting it.
	I remember as a contractor feeling very frustrated when
	NASA would show up at my facility and they have more people
	than I would and we were building the hardware. So all of this
	will be open.
	Now, I am not insinuating that we have bad people. I think
	we have fabulous people that don't have the visibility, and I
	think total cost accounting is going to get to the heart and
	soul of what you are asking.

	distributed active archive centers (daacs)

	Mr. Frelinghuysen. Well, there are two Federal agencies
	that could use that. Could you make a brief comment, with your
	indulgence, Mr. Chairman, on the Distributed Active Archive
	Centers? You use these centers now, is that my understanding,
	to process satellite data?
	Mr. Townsend. That is correct. I am Bill Townsend. I am the
	acting head of the Mission to Planet Earth program. We use the
	Distributed Active Archive Centers, DAACs as we call them. We
	have a number of them, about eight in total. We will be using
	them in the future to process the data from our Earth Observing
	System, and they will do the science data processing, and then
	will make that data available to the science community.
	I am informed that they can use it to do their research
	with relative to climate change issues, which the program is
	directed at.
	Mr. Frelinghuysen. Where are these centers located? Are
	they cheek by jowl with the research and flight centers?
	Mr. Townsend. No. There are some. For example, there is one
	at Goddard. There is another one at Langley and another one at
	JPL. So those are three that are associated with NASA centers.
	There are others. There is one in Boulder associated with
	the NOAA. There is one in South Dakota associated with the EROS
	Data Center. There is one in Alaska having to do with the
	collection of radar data using a high-latitude ground station
	from foreign and U.S. spacecraft. There are a couple of others
	scattered around.
	They tend to be centered around previous capabilities for
	processing certain types of data that have existed
	historically.
	Now, we are examining this in the future to see whether we
	might want to change this mode of operation. You may have heard
	of something called the ``federated approach,'' which is an
	approach to data processing and distribution we have examined
	with the National Academy of Sciences to look at how we might
	improve and how we process our data and distribute data in the
	future. We are getting ready to run a prototype activity over
	the next 3 years where we will experiment with this new mode of
	operation to see what the benefits and pitfalls of it are, so
	that we could move into that mode of operation in the future.

	earth observing system data information system

	Mr. Frelinghuysen. The EOSDIS is costing how much? I have a
	$300 million figure here.
	Mr. Townsend. In this year, about $250 million.
	Mr. Frelinghuysen. Is there a breakdown of how that money
	is spent somewhere?
	Mr. Townsend. Yes, there is.
	Mr. Frelinghuysen. I don't need it this minute, but for the
	record, if you could point it out----
	Mr. Townsend. Yes, sir.
	Mr. Frelinghuysen [continuing]. Cite the page.
	[The information follows:]

	The page that shows how EOSDIS money is spent is SAT 3-23
	of the FY 1998 Budget Justification.

	Mr. Frelinghuysen. Has NASA weighed the cost and benefits
	of having a system freely accessible by anyone who wants to use
	it, and is that something that is desirable?
	Mr. Townsend. We are in the process of looking into that.
	We have something going on right now for our entire program
	called a Biennial Review. This is a new process with Mission to
	Planet Earth program that we came up with in consultation with
	the National Academy of Sciences, based on a review that they
	did of our program about a year and a half ago. Under this
	approach, we would periodically conduct a review of the entire
	program. This is one of the questions that we would ask of this
	review; there will be an external independentreview of the
	recommendations coming out of this process later this spring.
	Mr. Goldin. There is one aspect that does concern us, and
	it has more to do with this technical limitations of the
	Internet. There is a lot of data, and the Internet is very
	slow. We at NASA are wanting to figure out how we can improve
	the capacity of the Internet. The broader band the Internet
	becomes, the greater our ability to provide this data on a more
	open basis. We are facing a little horse race here between how
	fast we put data out and how fast the Internet could accept it.
	This is another aspect.
	The other problem with the Internet is the protocol doesn't
	have priority, and we have to figure out how to do that. So,
	instead of NASA reinventing it, we are trying to work with
	industry to transfer technologies and work with the DOD and
	other Government agencies, but in the limit, if we could get
	the Internet with a higher bandwidth, we will be able to do a
	much better job in disseminating the data to anyone that wants
	it.
	Mr. Frelinghuysen. Thank you.

	EOS AM-1

	Mr. Lewis. Thank you, Mr. Frelinghuysen.
	The fiscal year 1998 budget request for the AM series is
	$49.1 billion, a reduction of about $43 million from the 1998
	estimate in the fiscal year 1997 budget. What has changed
	within the program which allows such a large reduction? Have
	any other pieces of the U.S. program experienced similar
	reductions?
	Mr. Goldin. Faster, better, cheaper is taking hold. I am
	very proud of this NASA team.
	Mr. Lewis. You and I have discussed this, but let's get it
	on the record.
	Mr. Goldin. This is real evidence.
	Mr. Lewis. Right, yes.
	Mr. Goldin. This is real evidence, and the AM-1 platform
	remains the same. It is the AM-2 that we are talking about
	making less money, and in our Biennial Review, we are going to
	look at ways of perhaps making it even less expensive yet.

	chem-i Program

	Mr. Lewis. Okay, good. The budget material indicates a 1-
	year delay in the preliminary design review of the CHEM-I
	program which is attributed to a revised instrument schedule.
	What is the exact reason for the delay, and how can the program
	have a 1-year delay in preliminary design and critical design
	reviews and still maintain its launch date of December 2002?
	Mr. Goldin. Let me answer the second part of the question
	first. Faster, better, cheaper. We used to take 6 years to
	build platform, and in that time frame, it will take 3 or 4
	years. Why commit money before you have to commit money if it
	takes less time to do it? So that is the reason.
	Because we have extra time, in response to direction from
	our advisory panel who felt maybe there is a cheaper way of
	doing it than just using the common spacecraft which we have in
	place now, we are throwing this open to alternate methods and
	looking at perhaps a principal investigative concept where we
	don't award a contract to the bus of one company, award
	contracts or instruments to others, and then have separate
	principal investigators. Perhaps we can go vertically
	integrated. Perhaps we could break it up into three or four
	parts.
	So we are taking the extra time we have available because
	of faster, better, cheaper to see if we could really do it even
	faster and even better and cheaper.
	Mr. Lewis. Yes.
	Mr. Frelinghuysen, I appreciate your loyal and regular
	participation. We are going to be moving pretty rapidly. So, if
	you want to interject on any of these questions I am asking,
	please feel free, okay?
	Mr. Frelinghuysen. Thank you.

	lightsar program

	Mr. Lewis. NASA has initiated the LightSAR program in
	fiscal year 1997, as directed by the Congress, but it has
	requested no funding for 1998. What is NASA's contracting
	strategy for this program? Does NASA intend to ask private
	industry to fund a portion of the development of LightSAR, and
	what has been the reaction of industry if you had that
	conversation?
	Mr. Goldin. We have a three-pronged approach to this. One
	approach is, we have something new at NASA called Earth Space
	Science Probes, which anyone could bid any concept to. It is
	the principal investigator concept, so long as it fits within a
	cost window of $90 million.
	Mr. Townsend. $120 million.
	Mr. Goldin. $120 million.
	Mr. Townsend. The first solicitation was capped at $90
	million for the first mission.
	Mr. Goldin. One possibility is that a company could win
	this competition building a radar satellite. We have a second
	opportunity. We are making a $50 million data purchase. A
	company might choose to bid the radar for that.
	So, rather than going ahead and having a classical
	procurement, the money up front, getting a contractor, and then
	having two contracts, we are holding the money back. By the
	way, this is a smart way of having uncosted carryover. We may
	not even commit all the $12 million that we have this year.
	The third approach is to work with industry in saying,
	``Okay, industry, you said you want to work with us in the cost
	share.'' So what we are doing is we are letting four or five
	market survey studies take a look at the different requirements
	we might have for such a system and asking the companies, based
	upon these market surveys, to see how they want to configure
	it, so there is a consortium of four or five companies, and
	then tell us how much money they are willing to put in. We will
	make a decision at the end of the year after all of these
	things come to closure.
	Mr. Lewis. The total cost that you anticipate falls within
	the parameters.
	Mr. Goldin. The estimate is $160 million, but now my
	question is, if this is going to be a cooperation with
	industry, if they put in 5 or 10 percent, it makes no sense to
	us. If they put in a larger percentage, then it becomes really
	a cost share. This gets back to the point I made in the
	beginning. We want to work with industry, but let's not call it
	commercial if it really is a Government program.
	Mr. Lewis. Do you anticipate a need in the fiscal year
	1998?
	Mr. Goldin. Right now, we are not sure that we do. If we do
	have a need, we will come back through an operating plan change
	and reprogram out of existing funds. We do not want more money.

	eosdis contractor schedule slippage

	Mr. Lewis. Good. December 27, 1996, NASA issued a stop work
	order which relieved the EOSDIS contractor responsibility for
	developing release A software because of schedule slippage. Why
	was the contractor having trouble staying on schedule?
	Mr. Goldin. There were a variety of reasons, one of which
	was that they were counting on using commercial off-the-shelf
	software. That worked, but what didn't work is--and this is a
	new experience for all of us--were the interfaces between those
	stand-alone packages and the rest of the system. They should
	have known better, and by the way, NASA should have known
	better, too.
	Secondly, there is an enormous stress for software experts.
	The aerospace companies have some of the best software experts
	in the world, and the commercial sector just blossoms at paying
	premiums to steal away our people. This is capitalism. We have
	got to live with it.
	Our contractor was not able to retain all the people that
	they needed, and they really got into a terrible, terrible
	dilemma, and they didn't perform for that reason.
	Third, their management was sloppy, along with the NASA
	oversight.
	Mr. Lewis. Mr. Frelinghuysen asked a number of questions
	dealing with this area, but who is now responsible for the
	development of the really safe software and at what cost?
	Mr. Goldin. Initially, what we wanted to do--and let me put
	this into perspective. If you take a look at the Mission to
	Planet Earth program, EOSDIS is about 24 percent of it. This is
	about one-third of that, or 8 percent of the total Mission to
	Planet Earth program. So I want to put it into perspective, A.
	B, we have reserves to cover our issues. So, saying that, now
	let me explain what happened.
	In fact, we were expecting that our contractor would have
	an early release of the core programs that they were going to
	have for their ECS system, but they did not perform. This was
	going to be an early test, but we have to launch a spacecraft,
	the Tropical Rain Fall Measuring Spacecraft, and we need the
	software in time.
	The other part of the problem was because they had not
	enough software people. Instead of doing the real core of the
	job, getting ready for the AM-1 launch, they were getting
	diverted. So we said we have got to get the phase B done, which
	is getting ready for the AM-1 launch. So we, NASA, took over
	the job that is being done at NASA-Goddard and NASA-Langley. It
	is about $5 to $6 million in additional development cost and
	about $12 million additional operating cost.
	So this contractor's lack of performance is costing the
	Federal taxpayers $17 to $18 million. We have it within our
	reserves, but once again, we like to compliment contractors. In
	this case, we are not happy with their performance.
	Mr. Lewis. Did you have a release date for the currently
	estimated?
	Mr. Goldin. Yes. It will be ready a month or two before
	launch, in September.
	Mr. Lewis. In September. Great.
	I understand the contracts originally were in the
	neighborhood of $760 million. Did NASA reduce the value of its
	contract with the contractor to reflect the reduction in the
	work being performed?
	Mr. Goldin. Bill, do you want to answer that?
	Mr. Townsend. We are in the process of issuing a change
	order to modifications of the contract, and we are currently in
	negotiations with Hughes on that point.
	Mr. Lewis. Okay. We will be interested in hearing about
	that.
	Mr. Goldin. The Hughes management is trying very, very hard
	to remedy the situation. This is a tough, tough job, but they
	have got to perform better. I want you to understand that we,
	NASA, are not going to allow this program to get into trouble,
	and Bill Townsend has commissioned a study at the NASA-Goddard
	Center that says what would we do if there is lack of
	performance on Phase B, and what would we do if that lack of
	performance is so bad that we would like to recompete the whole
	contract.
	Now, on the positive side, the Hughes management has
	stepped up and said they are going to perform. But we want to
	be sure everyone understands NASA is not going to be held
	hostage.

	landsat

	Mr. Lewis. Okay, good. LANDSAT. The U.S. Geological Survey
	is the designated agency for archive of LANDSAT-7 data. Does
	USGS currently have archive capability or will capability need
	to be developed?
	Mr. Goldin. Bill, do you want to----
	Mr. Townsend. Sure. They currently do have archive
	capability because they are currently the land remote sensing
	data center. They are currently, for example, handling LANDSAT-
	4 and -5 data. So they currently have the capability. They will
	need to augment that capability to handle LANDSAT-7, and they
	have the funding necessary to do that.
	Mr. Lewis. They do, okay.
	How does the USGS capability compare to the EOSDIS efforts
	under development?
	Mr. Townsend. Well, in the case of EOSDIS, it is in the end
	system approach, which includes spacecraft operations,
	collection of data, the processing of that data into a form
	that research can be done with it, and then the archival and
	distribution of the data. That is what EOSDIS is designed to
	do.
	In the case of the task that the USGS has for LANDSAT-7, it
	is just the archival and data distribution function. NOAA is
	responsible. It is a tri-agency program. It is NASA, NOAA, and
	USGS. NOAA is responsible for spacecraft operations, data
	capture, and then processing the data, and then, USGS, of
	course, is responsible for archival and distribution. NASA is
	responsible for the development of the space segment.
	Mr. Lewis. That relationship, then, is the reason for USGS
	doing archiving rather than NASA EOSDIS?
	Mr. Townsend. That, plus the fact that they have designated
	in Public Law 102-555 as the agency to do that function.
	Mr. Lewis. Should it be different from that?
	Mr. Townsend. I don't believe so. They are doing an
	excellent job of it.
	Mr. Goldin. We have a great relationship with USGS and are
	very, very satisfied with their performance.
	Mr. Lewis. Okay. If you could just round out those
	questions, that would be fine.
	We have discussed a little bit the costs and carryover, and
	we have some additional questions, but we can do that on the
	record, too.
	Mr. Goldin. Okay.

	advanced x-ray astrophysics facility

	Mr. Lewis. The Advanced X-ray Astrophysics Facility, the
	third of NASA's great observatories, is scheduled for launch in
	August of 1998. One component of the facility is the science
	instrument module which will house the two focal plane science
	instruments. The material submitted to the committee indicate
	that the completion of the module is over 1 year behind
	schedule. Yet, the launch date of the facility has not been changed.
	Can you explain to us how it is possible for a key element to be over 1
	year behind schedule and still launch in time?
	Mr. Goldin. Well, again, I am very proud that NASA----
	Mr. Lewis. Faster.
	Mr. Goldin. Yes. Let me tell you, these folks--this is a
	program in excess of a billion dollars. They said we need to
	test the mirrors at NASA-Marshall, and this very critical
	element, the science module is not available. So, for a million
	dollars, they built a surrogate module that didn't have to be
	flight quality that allowed us to do the testing down at NASA-
	Marshall and, in parallel with that testing, they were able to
	build this other module. Then, when they have to do the final
	integration of test of the spacecraft, it will be there on
	time.
	This is what is so wonderful about NASA. Our people are
	very, very imaginative, and they did a heck of a good job on
	this.

	discovery program

	Mr. Lewis. Good. I will just go ahead. The Discovery
	program is intended to provide frequent access to space for
	small planetary missions with short development schedules. The
	overall goal is less than $150 million in cost and no more than
	3 years from start of development to launch. The budget for
	fiscal year 1998 includes $64 million for future missions which
	are undefined.
	Does the announcement of opportunity contracting
	methodology define the specific mission NASA wishes to pursue,
	or is it open to anything investigators want to propose?
	Mr. Goldin. No. This is a new NASA. We will tell people
	what we want, not how to do it. The whole purpose of this
	Discovery program was to allow the scientific and industrial
	community to have complete freedom. They bid an entire package.
	The principal investigator is in charge, and generally, we have
	one or two NASA people on these programs.
	Mr. Lewis. When do you expect to define the fiscal year
	1998 program?
	Mr. Goldin. The selection notice is coming out about April
	1st. We will down-select to about five or six----
	Mr. Lewis. April 1st, that is a good date.
	Mr. Goldin. Great date. To five or six contractors by the
	end of August. We will downsize to five or six contractors, and
	then by the end of August, we will have the reports.
	One of the things we learned in the first solicitation for
	Discovery was that we had a flaw in the process, and Wes
	Huntress had a review. This review said we needed more time to
	develop the cost and better understanding. The first go-around
	was going to be on science, and the second go-around was going
	to be on cost in program management. We hope by the end of
	September to select the winning contractor. So, within a few
	months, you will be able to see the different concepts, and by
	perhaps October 1st, the start of the new fiscal year, we will
	have an award.

	sounding rocket program

	Mr. Lewis. Okay. The budget material indicates that the
	fiscal year 1998 sounding rocket program will have only 14
	flights versus 26 flights in fiscal year 1997. In addition,
	none of the 1998 flights are planned for the Wallops Island
	Flight Facility.
	Could you explain the reduction in flights as well as the
	decision to conduct most flights from Puerto Rico?
	Mr. Goldin. Sure.
	Mr. Lewis. Explain, if you will, also the components of the
	Wallops 2000 plan.
	Mr. Goldin. First, we will probably have 20 to 25 flights.
	At the present time, we have 14 defined.
	Mr. Lewis. Okay.
	Mr. Goldin. There is a process through the year to make
	sure they are ready to fly, and again, Wes knows he is not
	allowed to overrun. So he has put a process in place to have a
	control, and he also doesn't have much uncosted, so much for
	that.
	Some of the flights will come out of White Sands and
	Wallops. Now, every 5 or 6 years, we come back to Puerto Rico
	because we want to take advantage of the radio telescope at
	Arecibo. So we get simultaneous measurements from sounding
	rockets and using that radio telescope. That is the reason we
	have a large number of flights in Puerto Rico this year.
	Mr. Lewis. Off the record just for a moment. Back on the
	record.
	Mr. Goldin. No. I am not going to Puerto Rico.
	Mr. Lewis. On the record.
	I did ask you to explain the components of the Wallops Plan
	2000.
	Mr. Goldin. Yes. We were concerned that Wallops had an
	incredible facilities, very low cost, but they were drifting;
	that the sounding rocket program wasn't as focused as it could
	be; and that they were going to see changes because, as we get
	the launch cost down for low orbital vehicles, we will start
	doing a lot more university research there.
	So we have now given the leadership role to Wallops Island
	for all sounding rockets, but we have expanded to say, really,
	for low-cost university class programs. So that would be
	getting involved in the university research program. The object
	there is to build complete spacecraft and payloads and
	operation on the order of $4 million and to have a million-
	dollar launch or a $2-million launch. So this is going to be a
	very significant new role.
	If we are successful, I am hoping that we will be seeing a
	dozen launches a year coming from universities for a price that
	we can afford. So that is a very major step for the Wallops.
	Given that they are going to get involved in that, they are
	working with NASA-Marshall and some of our commercial
	contractors in providing operational test facilities for new
	generation on these very, very, very small launch vehicles and
	sounding rockets. That is another new role for them.
	Finally, we are going to work with the Space Port Authority
	in Virginia to encourage commercial launches there, and for the
	operations aspect at Wallops, we are working with the Navy
	because there is a lot of work that the Navy does at the
	Wallops facility, and we have incredible aircraft capability
	there and other operational capability that the Navy could use.
	They don't have to build a separate facility. This gets back to
	the cooperation question that we were talking about with other
	members of the committee.

	developing new technology

	Mr. Lewis. Okay. Just a couple more questions, and then I
	will turn to Mr. Frelinghuysen.
	The budget material includes $75 million for the New
	Millennium program, $151 million for Advanced Space Technology,
	and $311 million for Supporting Research andTechnology. All
	three of these programs fall in the area of developing new technology.
	What is the distinction among these three efforts?
	Mr. Goldin. Well, first, the Advanced Space Technology
	program is generic technology that we work on that benefits all
	our space programs.
	New Millennium is a program to validate cutting-edge
	technology, and under New Millennium, we are working on outer
	planet technology. One of the significant problems we are
	facing up to today is as you go to the outer planets, you don't
	have solar power, and you have to go to some other form of
	power. Right now we use radioisotopes. They are very expensive.
	They are very heavy, and they are very inefficient.
	So one of the things we are doing as part of the New
	Millennium program is to see if we can build a Next-Generation
	system that has a much higher efficiency. Right now the
	efficiency is measured 4 to 5 percent. We are looking for
	efficiencies of 25 percent.
	The other aspect is we want to get the power consumption
	down. So we are working on Next Generation semiconductors that
	perhaps could be 20 to 25 percent--20 times less power. Now,
	all of a sudden, you will have to carry much less radioisotopic
	material, which will make it much lower cost, much simpler to
	operate, and the public will have a higher confidence in it. We
	have a whole series of those technologies that we are trying to
	validate on the New Millennium program.
	The Supporting Research and Technology is the traditional
	science support that we have, and now with the Origins program,
	it is going to support these very large interfenometers, the
	Next Generation Hubble Space Telescope, and the basis of all
	the science that we do. So those are the three programs that we
	have.
	Mr. Lewis. Okay. The total of these three programs grew by
	about $160 million in fiscal year 1996 and 1997 budget levels,
	between those two. What is the cause of this adjustment,
	significant dollar adjustment?
	Mr. Goldin. I will let Mr. Peterson talk to the dollar
	details, but let me say, what we want to do at NASA is make it
	in the limit of a research and analysis agency, research and
	technology agency, and get out of operations, and that is why
	we are pushing commercialization hard.
	Again, I accept the one thing that Potomac Institute said,
	not as fast as we would like to, but as fast as we know how to.
	As a result, we are seeing a change, a shift. We have
	reprogrammed operations money and put it into advanced
	technology that will really be cutting edge. This is what we
	had talked to this committee about over the last few years, and
	you are now seeing the results. You are seeing an increase in
	the research and technology account, while the budget is coming
	down $200 million, which is another thing we promised to do.
	So, not only do we sign up to a budget that is coming down,
	we said measure us on output. We are going to reprogram
	operations and do that more efficiently and convert that money
	into cutting-edge technology.
	Mr. Lewis. Thank you.
	Mr. Goldin. Now, can you comment on the detail?
	Mr. Lewis. Go ahead.
	Mr. Peterson. Well, the fundamental, of course, is that one
	of the major administration initiatives for NASA this year was
	aggressive implementation of the New Millennium technology
	program in terms of the Origins program. So the beginning part
	of the Origins program is a technology development program, and
	so the larger infusion is designated for that. It is tied
	around a number of the things that we identified, like the Keck
	II interferometer and advanced technology development and
	Astrobiology and Astrochemistry research.
	We have a little disagreement on the numbers. We think the
	numbers only went up about $112 million, but it was an
	appreciable increase, nonetheless, and the reason for that is
	because we are putting a tremendous amount of effort into this
	new initiative.
	Mr. Lewis. Just help us with that for the record.
	Mr. Peterson. Yes, sir.
	[The information follows:]

	As noted by Mr. Campbell, the funding levels for these NASA
	technology programs actually grew by about $112 million, rather than
	the $160 million cited in the Chairman's question. This net increase is
	a result of the following:
	The New Millennium Program is proposed for an augmentation in FY
	1998. The augmentation will initiate aggressive technology development
	and demonstration efforts needed for future deep space missions. This
	augmentation responds to the NASA Administrator's direction to explore
	the outer solar system with ``cutting edge'' next-generation spacecraft
	that are more robust (safer to launch) and which use new power sources.
	The President has also recommended augmentation in FY 1998 for
	Supporting Research and Technology (SR&T). These include $25.0 million
	for Origins Technology Development, $20.0 million for Exploration
	Technology Development, $10.0 million for the Keck II Interferometer,
	and $27.0 million for the new Astrobiology and Astrochemistry research
	programs. All of these fall under the President's new Origins
	initiative. The current budget runout for Origins allows for
	preliminary work on advanced telescopes that would be launched early in
	the next decade. We have set as our goal developing these next-
	generation telescopes at a cost, on average, equal to or less than one-
	tenth the life cycle cost of the Hubble Space Telescope, the world's
	premiere observatory. That is an ambitious goal, but it is one that we
	think we can accomplish. The costs of individual telescopes will depend
	on the design of the missions selected and on how much technology can
	further drive down the costs.
	Growth in Advanced Spacecraft Technology restores cuts in program
	funding that occurred in FY 1997.
	The New Millennium program consists of:
	Core Program to space validate cutting-edge technologies
	Outer Planets Technology program to concentrate on next
	generation spacecraft (micro-miniaturization, new structure,
	new materials),
	An Advanced RTG (Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator)
	program to develop advanced radioactive power sources for outer
	planet missions, and,
	Center for Integrated Space Microsystems program to do
	fundamental development of micro-devices and to carry out
	mission studies leading to ``spacecraft on a chip'' concepts.
	Supporing Research and Technology (SR&T) activities include:
	Traditional Science Research and Analysis (R&A),
	The Information Systems and High Performance Computers &
	Communications (HPCC) programs,
	Advanced Technology Development (ATD) activities devoted to
	near-term (1999-2004) Space Science missions,
	Origins Technology to enable the first large-scale
	interferometer, to develop large telescope concepts to search
	for extra-solar planetary systems, and to study the origins of
	galaxies,
	Exploration Technology to enable effective exploration of the
	surface of solar system bodies large and small anticipated in
	the next generation of planetary exploration (including sample
	return missions).
	The Advanced Space Technology program contains:
	The crosscutting technology efforts formerly managed by
	NASA's Office of Space Access and Technology (Code X). This
	program largely develops generic technological capabilities
	addressing the needs of more than one NASA Enterprise (e.g.,
	Human Exploration, Space Science, Mission to Planet Earth,
	Aeronautics)
	Far-term fundamental technology studies and research,
	Some Space Science Enterprise-unique technology work, and,
	Advanced concepts for Space Science's future needs.

	Mr. Goldin. And by the way, I might say that the President
	has been unbelievably supportive of this new direction. It is
	research and technology, and he is very supportive of the
	Origins program, which we think is going to return back
	incredible science, but more importantly than that, technology
	that is going to impact the communications sector, the
	information sector, advanced materials. So I think we are going
	to have a tremendous payback on that.
	Mr. Lewis. Mr. Frelinghuysen?

	high-performance computing and communications

	Mr. Frelinghuysen. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
	Mr. Goldin, the government-wide budget for High-Performance
	Computing and Communications increases by over $100 million in
	fiscal year 1998 for the Next Generation Internet. What is
	NASA's portion of the $100-million increase for the Next
	Generation Internet, and what is NASA's responsibility in the
	program?
	Mr. Goldin. It's $10 million measured over a 3-year period
	of $10 million a year.
	Mr. Frelinghuysen. Are there any costs associated to your
	agency relative to the whole issue of recalibrating computers
	for the year 2000 and beyond?
	Mr. Goldin. Yes, $32 million.
	Mr. Frelinghuysen. $32 million.
	Mr. Goldin. But let me come back to this. We have an expert
	capability in networking management, and we are going to apply
	that to the networking. The place that we really shine is in
	virtual environments. This is very crucial to the future of the
	space program.
	So the thing that I am pleased about is we are working on
	things that NASA has a cost scale in and things that will
	benefit the space program, but at the same time, we all know
	that that Internet needs to be improved, and that will benefit
	all young people and all the like.

	airline safety

	Mr. Frelinghuysen. Thank you.
	Earlier in your testimony, you made reference to the whole
	issue of NASA's involvement with airline safety, the White
	House Commission report, issued earlier this month, and you
	made mention that you were going to be involved in assisting
	and reducing the crash rate of the aircraft incident rates,
	five-fold within 10 years. What specifically will be NASA's
	role, and what do you anticipate the costs will be?
	Mr. Goldin. Well, first, let me say that we will take the
	lead in the R&D, but to actually see the reduction in crafts,
	it is going to take a partnership between the FAA certifying
	it, the aircraft companies building it, and the airlines
	operating it, but we felt it was very important to come to a
	bottom-line goal and not have a bunch of technology goals. So
	we have gone out on a line, but we have met with the CEOs of
	these companies. We are working with the FAA and DOD, and we
	feel we have a good chance. NASA's role will be to lead the
	R&D, cutting-edge R&D that will then be transferred to the
	industry.
	Mr. Frelinghuysen. Have you been involved already on this
	issue, or is this a new venture?
	Mr. Goldin. I would like to say that NASA is proud to have
	been involved in it. We have been asked by the Vice President
	to step up to this, and we are very excited about it. No, we
	have been involved.

	centers for the commercial development of space

	Mr. Frelinghuysen. In the past, NASA has provided financial
	support to a number of Centers for the Commercial Development
	of Space. What have been the results of the support provided by
	NASA, and do you believe continued support of these centers
	should come from NASA, or is this an area which should be
	wholly supported by industry?
	Mr. Goldin. First, let me provide some perspective. We have
	10 or 12 centers, and they get funded to the tune of 1- to $1.5
	million a year. So it is a very, very limited amount of money
	relative to our budget, but there is a certain cache associated
	by being associated with NASA that helps these areas, and these
	different centers are getting on the order of twice the NASA
	funding from the private sector. Again, it meets my criteria as
	something that makes sense because NASA is less than half of
	the funding.
	I could tell you that the car I drive got technology
	transfer through the Auburn Center to build a power system that
	works. I had a 2-year-old version of this car, and my wife was
	driving and it stopped in traffic because there was something
	fundamentally wrong with the power system, and because of the
	NASA technology transfer, we have a very good one. That is a
	personal story, but there are other stories.
	Mr. Frelinghuysen. Your wife said do something about it.
	Mr. Goldin. Very graphically.
	Mr. Frelinghuysen. Let's hope this doesn't happen with any
	underwater adventures.
	Mr. Goldin. I think I might be getting into some of that.
	We have a very successful venture led by Dr. Larry Balukus at
	the University of Birmingham. It is the Center for
	Crystallography, and they have a whole series of drugs and a
	new company called Biocryst that have come out of this, and
	they are certifying a drug that is expected to be a major
	factor in stamping out influenza on a generic basis, and there
	are a series of drugs in the process right now. That came out
	of the CCBS and the microgravity work we did on the shuttle.
	We are doing work in developing materials for cancer
	chemotherapy. We have a whole series of machine tool materials
	that we are working on. We did some work on some drugs that
	might be used against AIDS. Aerojet is developing an aero gel
	that could have a tremendous capacity in the optical area.
	It is in its embryonic stages now. Probably, the biggest
	problem is that we, NASA, are not giving them enough flight
	opportunities, and it comes back to the limitations we have on
	flight, and in fact, if you take a look at the funding over the
	next few years, the number of flights, it is going down, not
	up, because while we build the Space Station, we don't have the
	capacity to do everything.

	wake shield facility

	Mr. Frelinghuysen. One of those that has benefitted from
	flights, I believe, three times is the Wake Shield facility.
	Mr. Goldin. Yes.
	Mr. Frelinghuysen. Does NASA plan to continue providing
	shuttle space for the Wake Shield facility, and if so, what are
	the costs and benefits?
	Mr. Goldin. I think we have seen some incredible outputs in
	the Wake Shield. On our third flight, we flew seven samples
	that built semiconductors in a vacuum environment a hundred
	times better than you could have on the ground, and it looks
	like we got some real good results.
	We are anticipating the possibility of a fourth flight, but
	let me come back to what I was saying before. We want tohave
	industrial participation in that fourth flight because this is not a
	scientific experiment, anymore. The science is over.
	So we are working with the folks at the University of
	Houston and the Epitaxy Center, and we are trying to bring on
	industry. The next flight, instead of having seven test sites,
	might need something like 5 to 10 more test sites, which could
	cost as much as $16 million. So we are trying to see if there
	is some way of getting industry involved and doing some market
	survey so if we do the next flight, it really could begin to
	turn commercial.

	commercial services

	Mr. Lewis. Our committee's report for the fiscal year 1997
	appropriations for NASA, in that report, the committee asked
	NASA to develop and utilize alternative methods for determining
	the value and the price of commercial services offered under
	the firm fixed-price contracts. One, does the current
	methodology used by NASA include a contract pricing structure
	with three elements, A, recurring costs, B, fixed costs
	(asset), and C, fee?
	Mr. Goldin. The answer is yes when there is no competition.
	If we have competition, which is in the commercial area, we are
	not interested in having any breakdown because the commercial
	marketplace can do that for us.
	Now, there are a couple of contractors who get sole source
	business from us in the commercial area that would like to do
	it without the breakdown, and we are not going to allow it.
	Mr. Lewis. Does the current NASA methodology provide for a
	continuing allowance for fixed cost beyond the depreciation
	schedule for the asset, or is it possible in your contract
	pricing structure to arrive at zero fixed cost for an asset?
	Mr. Peterson. I would like to answer for the record. It is
	a little technical, but basically, we have to follow the
	Federal Acquisition Regulations.
	[The information follows:]

	The Federal Acquisition Regulation (31.205-11(e)) requires
	contractors to utilize a depreciation method acceptable for
	Federal income tax purposes.

	Mr. Frelinghuysen. Does the NASA policy allow for
	negotiation of the fee portion of a contract to compensate
	contractors for the higher risk associated with space-based
	operations?
	Mr. Peterson. Yes. There is a statutory limitation on it,
	and it is that limitation that has to be put in effect.
	Mr. Frelinghuysen. The National Space Policy issued in
	September 1996 encourages the use of innovative procurement
	methods. Is NASA being innovative?
	Mr. Goldin. I would like to get at the core of this.
	Mr. Lewis. For the record.
	Mr. Goldin. For the record, some contractors on a sole-
	source basis would like to negotiate a fixed-price contract and
	then negotiate fee, and we want to turn this commercial, so
	that we can get to some real competition. We won't have to
	worry about these issues. So it gets back to the basic theme
	that we had in this session.
	We would like to avoid doing this, but if we have to, we
	will.

	innovative procurement methods

	Mr. Frelinghuysen. The National Space Policy issues in
	September of last year encourages the use of innovative
	procurement methods. Is NASA being innovative? I presume from
	your previous answers, you are.
	Mr. Goldin. Yes, sir, and for the record, I will list 59
	ways we do it. No, about 5 or 10.
	[A copy of the ``Procurement Initiatives'' follows:]


	[Pages 69 - 70--The official Committee record contains additional material here.]


	technology transfer programs

	Mr. Frelinghuysen. Relative to the issue of technology
	transfer, and during all of your responses and your statement,
	you have touched on this, and you have given us some examples.
	President Clinton released a National Space Policy in
	September of last year covering civilian, military, and
	commercial space issues. Included as part of the commercial
	policy is a reference to technology transfer policy.
	Specifically, the policy states that the United States
	Government to provide for the timely transfer of Government-
	developed space technology to the private sector in such a
	manner as to protect its commercial value. What does that
	statement basically mean to you, and secondly, what specific
	programs are in place within NASA for technology transfer?
	Mr. Goldin. It means that we have an agency-wide technology
	transfer program at the direction of the President, which we
	do, and in fact, the third mission in NASA's mission statement
	deals with the fact that we have technology transfer. That is
	in our strategic plan.
	We have a commercial operation led by Dr. Robert Norwood.
	We expend something on the order of $34 million a year, and
	under that, we have six regional technology transfer centers, a
	national technology transfer center. We have five business
	incubators, and we have a very broad-based plan where we have a
	commercial center at each of our NASA centers, plus the Jet
	Propulsion Laboratory.
	I did publish what I call the agenda for change which talks
	about how NASA is going to be involved in technology transfer,
	and we would like to submit that for the record because it
	deals with the details of the question you just asked.
	Mr. Frelinghuysen. Okay, consider that done.
	[A copy of the ``Agenda for Change'' follows:]


	[Pages 72 - 89--The official Committee record contains additional material here.]



	Mr. Frelinghuysen. Are there any technology transfer
	programs funded within NASA which are not cost effective, and
	perhaps deliberately so? I will give you an out.
	Mr. Goldin. I think we could be accused of ignorance, but
	not malice. I don't believe we have anything that is
	deliberate, but given the size of the agency, given the fact
	that we could always do better, without even going in there, I
	think we would have some issues and problems.
	I would also have to say that the IG has done a study in
	some areas and has found some issues, and we are addressing
	them. You know, it is an independent relationship we have with
	the IG, but I think the IG provides a tremendous value to NASA.
	We also have a study by NAPA, the National Academy of
	Public Administration. We have asked them to come in based upon
	some of the studies the IG did to review our technology
	transfer program and tell us what we are doing right, tell us
	what we are doing wrong, and then we will step forward and we
	will make sure that the committee is aware of what the report
	says.

	nasa commercial technology inventory report

	Mr. Frelinghuysen. Is it fair to say you have reviewed the
	NASA IG's report on NASA Commercial Technology Inventory
	Report?
	Mr. Goldin. Yes.
	Mr. Frelinghuysen. And you support the goals, the findings
	of that report?
	Mr. Goldin. It is a very difficult problem that we have,
	and I agree with the report that the IG wrote. The dilemma we
	have is our contractors always want to have an additional edge,
	and they don't like the concept that they have to go public
	with some of these things. So the question is how could we
	incentivize the contractors to go public and provide access to
	other companies without trying to hold onto it themselves when
	they are working with public money. It is a tough, tough
	problem, but one that I believe we have an obligation to deal
	with.
	Mr. Frelinghuysen. But generally speaking, the IG review
	determined that the new technology reporting process as it
	relates to reporting by large business contractors is not as
	effective as it should be and lacks agency-wide direction and
	management support?
	Mr. Goldin. She is right. She is right.

	technology transfer programs

	Mr. Frelinghuysen. Lastly, could an effective report
	increase the value of NASA's technology transfer programs?
	Mr. Goldin. This gets to the place of can we get the
	contractors to come up with the cream of the crop. Sometimes
	they put their own money into it, and once they put their own
	money into it, it is very hard to separate out what is public
	domain and what is their domain, but I believe we have got to
	figure out how to do this better.
	Mr. Frelinghuysen. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
	Mr. Lewis. Thank you, Mr. Frelinghuysen.
	Earlier, we discussed a number of personnel questions, and
	while we may have some additional for the record, we have
	generally covered that area.
	Mr. Administrator, last September, the General Accounting
	Office issued a report.
	By the way, Mr. Frelinghuysen, the comment on NAPA that the
	director was talking about is different than the product of
	Napa County, California, in case you didn't know.
	Mr. Goldin. Jeffrey Lawrence will help you with that one.

	nasa's television operations

	Mr. Lewis. Excuse me for that aside.
	Last September, the General Accounting Office issued a
	report on the expenditures associated with the external and
	internal public affairs at NASA. The report states that NASA
	headquarters spent $20.8 million and the 10 field centers spent
	$20.1 million in fiscal year 1995.
	What portion of the total funding, $40.9 million, is
	associated with NASA's television operations?
	Mr. Peterson. $4.8 million, sir.
	Mr. Lewis. $4.8 million.
	How many employees or contract employees are dedicated to
	NASA's television operations, and what are the salaries and
	benefit costs for those employees?
	Submit those for the record.
	Mr. Peterson. I will be glad to, sir.
	[The information follows:]

	There are 11 civil service employees dedicated to NASA
	Television Operations. Their current total salaries and
	benefits are $629,100.
	There are 39 contractor employees dedicated to NASA
	Television Operations. Their current total salaries and
	benefits are $986,600.

	Mr. Lewis. Why does NASA have a television operation, and
	how long has it been in operation?
	Mr. Goldin. I will take that. Probably, the most important
	thing we need the NASA television operation for is the fact
	that we run real missions with real people around the clock,
	and it is a very, very important communication tool, first,
	from a safety standpoint and, second, from a science
	standpoint. So it ties all our centers together, and then we
	also use it for robotic launches and robotic missions.
	Secondly, there is a tremendous interest by the American
	public to know what is going on. When we have missions, it just
	has people glued to their TVs. Now, what NASA does is provide
	raw output. We have tried to make sure that we don't
	editorialize. We try and be like C-SPAN, if you will, you know,
	here are the raw facts. So that is the second function.
	Mr. Lewis. If you try not to editorialize, it will be fine.
	You don't have to talk about C-SPAN.
	Mr. Goldin. Okay, I'm sorry.
	Mr. Lewis. That is all right.
	Mr. Goldin. We use it for educational development at some
	of our centers, and we also make it available to the press. We
	put on what is called B roll, which is unedited material, and
	then the press could take it and decide how they want to use it
	again because of the tremendous interest.
	Finally, a lot of people from the press want to talk to
	NASA astronauts, scientists, and management officials, and it
	saves us a lot of time and trouble because we could use the
	satellite TV links to hook up people around the country when we
	have a problem or when we are having some good science going
	on. So those are the primary functions.
	We have tried to eliminate all other non-essential
	activities for the system so we could be very frugal in the use
	of it.
	Mr. Lewis. Yes. I have often discussed this subject by way
	of talking about selling the sizzle. If the public doesn't know
	what you are doing and they can't get excited by some of the
	results, et cetera, sometimes their enthusiasm can disappear or
	at least be diminished, and frankly, I think so far we have
	done a pretty good job of that, although I encourage more of
	it.
	Recently, I was discussing a disease I hadn't heard about
	before that has to do with Latin American----
	Mr. Goldin. Chagas disease.
	Mr. Lewis. Chagas disease. We have done some experimenting
	with in terms of crystals. I think the more the public knows
	about some of those things--you mentioned earlier the
	pharmaceutical companies are quite interested in our flights,
	but no small reason for that is because of the tremendous
	potential that relate to bettering people's lives, lengthening
	lives, and improving health care generally. I am not sure the
	public always understands NASA's relative role to that.
	The more those people out in the mobile home parks in
	America hear people say why we should be spending this money in
	space, the more you can tie it to their health and their
	grandkids' health and so on. All that is very relevant.
	Mr. Goldin. Let me tell you, when they turn on direct
	broadcast TV, which is now going to be a multi-billion-dollar
	industry, that came from NASA. I mean, I don't know if you are
	aware of it, Mr. Chairman, but NASA flew the first experiment
	in direct broadcast TV in 1976, and the young engineer who is
	working on that is named Lan Golden who has a patent.
	Mr. Lewis. Sam Goldin?
	Mr. Goldin. Lan Golden, for the record.
	But I had the privilege of being in industry and working
	with NASA on that particular system, and it was done a few
	decades before any commercialization took place, and that is
	the type of thing we do, and when we did it, there were those
	concerns saying why should NASA be doing it. Well, we needed to
	develop telecommunications and telemedicine. That is why we did
	it, and the public benefitted by that particular activity. So
	now thousands of people have jobs, and millions of Americans
	have the luxury of direct broadcast TV.

	national wind tunnel complex

	Mr. Lewis. Yes. Sometimes there is a lot of meat to the
	sizzle, but it is worth selling as well.
	Briefly, to wind tunnels, the fiscal year 1995
	appropriations included $400 million for construction of a
	national wind tunnel complex. The funding was to be made
	available contingent upon follow-on funding being included in
	the fiscal year 1996 budget request.
	The follow-on funding was not requested, but the Congress
	modified the fiscal year 1995 language to allow more time for
	study of the requirements. The time for study was also extended
	in fiscal year 1997, and a further extension is proposed for
	inclusion in the 1998 bill.
	What is the Government's plan for wind tunnels, and why
	should the $365 million left in the program remain available
	for this effort?
	Mr. Peterson. If I can answer that, sir. As you know, we
	are allowed to spend $35 million out of the $400 million in
	order to look at ways we can improve wind tunnel testing and
	have that attribute more effectively to the design process.
	Now, the $365 million residual amount, the administration
	decided that it would not be necessary to make a decision at
	this time to ask for recision of those funds. They wanted to
	give the process a little time to play its way out in terms of
	what studies are currently going on.

	aircraft consolidation

	Mr. Lewis. Thank you.
	A very brief question and a very brief answer. Fiscal year
	1997 appropriations included authority to consolidate NASA
	aircraft at Dryden. How many aircraft have been moved to Dryden
	Flight Research Center?
	Mr. Goldin. Zero.

	multi-year appropriations

	Mr. Lewis. Just moving right along. Multi-year
	appropriation. The budget proposal includes a request for
	multi-year appropriations for the International Space Station,
	Space Infrared Telescope Facility, X-33 launch vehicle,
	Tracking and Data Relay Satellite replenishment, and a
	Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy. Why are these
	particular programs selected for including in this proposal?
	Mr. Goldin. The Administration would like to get the total
	program funding eventually for programs like NASA that provide
	stability so people could count on it, and the administration
	proposed it last year, and this year, they would like to try
	again so that we could do total budgeting.
	The experience of other departments when we do total
	budgeting really ends up in a more efficient operation. I know
	that this is at odds with some of the processes in the
	Government, but this is the major argument that the
	administration has.
	Mr. Lewis. And all of those arguments that relate to multi-
	year funding relate to this answer, I am assuming, and we have
	been through that before, here and at other committees. So, if
	you want to round it out for the record,that is fine, but that
	is enough.
	I must say we proceeded reasonably expeditiously today. Mr.
	Obey did want to be here to ask some questions. I know that Mr.
	DeLay and others may have questions for the record. So we will
	keep it open for that purpose, but in the meantime, I want you,
	Dan Goldin, but also all of your very fine professional staff
	to know how much we appreciate the cooperation that we have had
	over the years, the very tough discussions regarding cheaper,
	faster, better, et cetera.
	This agency has been very responsive overall. We may have
	questions and criticize each other from time to time, but I
	must say it has been a very positive relationship. We very much
	appreciate the cooperation, and with that, do you have any
	closing remarks? Otherwise, we will move on.
	Mr. Goldin. The only thing I would like to say, in
	response, is that I appreciate the confidence you have in us,
	and it is not the administrator. It is these people here and
	all the people who work for them. I want to tell you that
	working for me is not easy.
	I push people very, very hard not because I want to punish
	them.
	Mr. Lewis. People keep telling me that. I keep saying he is
	such a nice guy.
	Mr. Goldin. But I wouldn't push them if I didn't think they
	were outstanding.
	Mr. Lewis. Yes.
	Mr. Goldin. NASA had outstanding people before I came, and
	they will be outstanding after I leave. I want you to
	understand the tremendous confidence I have in the people at
	NASA. They are a unique breed. They work long hours. They work
	with an incredible intensity. They get offers from industry to
	make lots more money, and they choose to stay because they
	believe in the future of our country.
	Mr. Lewis. Fine. Well, I think, Mr. Administrator, I think
	this concludes our meetings for now. It kind of eliminates the
	need for a meeting tomorrow.
	[The statement of Mr. Goldin follows:]



	[Pages 95 - 124--The official Committee record contains additional material here.]



	Mr. Goldin. So we are done?
	Mr. Lewis. We are finished. You are free, and it is only
	3:35.
	Mr. Goldin. I like it.
	[The following was submitted to be included in the record:]

	[Pages 126 - 285--The official Committee record contains additional material here.]





	I N D E X

	----------
	Page
	Administrator's prepared statement............................... 95-116
	Advanced Space Technology program................................ 62
	Advanced X-Ray Astrophysics Facility............................. 60
	Aeronautics research programs.................................... 8-10
	Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel.................................. 51, 52
	Agenda for Change (insert)....................................... 72-89
	Aircraft consolidation at Dryden................................. 93
	Aviation safety............................................... 9, 10, 65
	Brazil........................................................... 42
	Budget summary--charts and tables............................... 117-123
	Cardiac imaging.................................................. 38, 39
	Centers for the Commercial Development of Space.................. 66, 67
	Centers of Excellence............................................ 30, 50
	Chemistry-1 program.............................................. 56, 57
	Cleveland Clinic................................................. 38
	Commercial Technology Inventory Report........................... 90
	Commercialization.......... 39, 40, 41, 43, 45-47, 57, 58, 66, 67, 71-89
	Department of Defense cooperation........................ 21, 29, 30, 31
	Discovery program................................................ 60, 61
	Distributed Active Archive Centers............................... 54, 55
	Earth Observing System AM series................................. 56
	Earth Observing System Data Information System:
	Contractor schedule slippage................................. 58, 59
	Costs and benefits........................................... 55, 56
	Earth Space Science Probes....................................... 57, 58
	Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle................................ 49
	Financial management................................. 11, 12, 37, 38, 54
	High-Performance Computing and Communications.................... 65
	Hubble Space Telescope Repair Mission............................ 4
	Internet......................................................... 56, 65
	Kennedy Space Flight Center...................................... 25, 26
	Landsat data archive............................................. 59, 60
	Lead Center concept.............................................. 29
	LightSAR program................................................. 57
	Lockheed-Martin Corporation...................................... 28
	Marshall Space Flight Center..................................... 6
	Minority university research..................................... 37
	Mission to Planet Earth.......................................... 21, 56
	Multi-year appropriations........................................ 93
	NASA Center's autonomy........................................... 53
	NASA Student Program............................................. 21
	National security................................................ 44
	National Space Policy............................................ 71
	Naval Research Laboratory..................................... 6, 32, 33
	Near-Earth Asteroid Tracking..................................... 40, 41
	New Millennium program........................................... 62, 63
	Opening remarks:
	Chairman..................................................... 1, 2
	NASA Administrator........................................... 2, 4-5
	Origins Technology program....................................... 63, 64
	Potomac Institute study.......................................... 45
	Pratt and Whitney................................................ 52
	Privatization............................................ 43, 44, 47, 48
	Procurement:
	Commercial services.......................................... 67
	Innovative methods........................................... 68-70
	Program redirection.............................................. 9-10
	Property/facilities overhead..................................... 53, 54
	Propulsion testing facilities................................ 29, 30, 49
	Questions for the record........................................ 126-285
	Remote sensing................................................... 30
	Reusable launch vehicles......................................... 24, 25
	Russian collaboration............................. 1, 5, 6-8, 19, 20, 22
	Senior Executive Service......................................... 24
	Sounding rocket program.......................................... 61, 62
	Space Shuttle:
	Multifunction Electronic Display System...................... 51
	Orbiter Maintenance Down Period operations................... 25
	Propulsion upgrades.......................................... 52
	Safety and performance upgrades.............................. 50
	Systems integration.......................................... 52, 53
	Space Station:
	Annual budget cap............................................ 48
	Contingency plan--Interim/replacement modules...... 5, 6, 22, 32, 33
	FGB module............................................. 6, 22, 33-35
	Funding and costs.......................................... 7, 8, 35
	International cooperation.................................... 42, 43
	Launch schedule.................................... 7, 8, 22, 33, 34
	Russian contribution.............. 1, 5, 6-8, 19, 20, 22, 35, 36, 44
	Service Module schedule...................................... 5, 22
	Staffing:
	Employee buyouts............................................. 14-18
	Retraining program........................................... 10, 11
	Women and minority employees............. 10, 11, 23, 24, 31, 36, 37
	Stennis Space Center..................................... 29, 30, 49, 50
	Supporting research and technology............................... 62, 63
	Technology transfer.......................................... 71, 72, 90
	Television operations............................................ 91, 92
	U.S. Geological Survey........................................... 59, 60
	USA Company...................................................... 47
	Wake Shield Facility............................................. 66, 67
	Wallops Flight Facility.......................................... 61, 62
	Wind tunnels..................................................... 92, 93
	X-33/X-34 launch vehicles:
	Budget request............................................... 27, 28
	General.................................................. 20, 21, 27
	Government versus private sector ownership................... 39, 40
	LASER experiment............................................. 45
	Armstrong, Spence M., Associate Administrator for Human Resources
	and Education.................................................. 14
	Goldin, Daniel S., Administrator................................. 2
	Prepared statement........................................... 95-116
	Peterson, Malcolm L., Comptroller................................ 13
	Townsend, William F., Associate Administrator for Mission to
	Planet Earth (Acting).......................................... 55
	Trafton, Wilbur C., Associate Administrator for Space Flight..... 8
	Whitehead, Robert E., Associate Administrator for Aeronautics and
	Space Transportation Technology................................ 10

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