[House Hearing, 105 Congress] [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]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 ________ 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