Mrs. MORELLA. Is the funding in the adminstration budget? Mrs. MORELLA. It is. So it is up to appropriations and the authorization-thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. NELSON. Thank you, Mrs. Morella. We appreciate you being here today, thank you. Dr. FISK. Thank you. Mr. NELSON. Have a good day, and the meeting is adjourned. [Whereupon, at 11:45 a.m., this hearing adjourned, to be reconvened at the call of the Chair.] 1989 NASA AUTHORIZATION THURSDAY, MARCH 10, 1988 HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE, SPACE, AND TECHNOLOGY, SUBCOMMITTEE ON SPACE SCIENCE AND APPLICATIONS, Washington, DC. The subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 9:40 a.m., in room 2318, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Bill Nelson (chairman of the subcommittee) presiding. Mr. NELSON. Good morning. At 5:18 in the morning, if you will go outside, look up, if it is not overcast, you may be, with the naked eye, able to see the Soviet Space Station MIR as, in its 90-minute orbit, it passes in a ground track over our Nation's Capital. That is significant as we have the discussion of the United States Space Station today. It is no secret that the Budget Committee of the House, those Members, feel that deep cuts are going to have to be made in our space program and specifically in the Space Station. Certainly that is an easy place for them to look as to area of cut. It all comes on the heel of the deal that was struck last December between the President and the congressional leadership in which only a $3 billion increase would take place in the budget in 1989 over 1988 in the area of non-defense discretionary, and in the President's recommendation $2.5 billion of that goes just into NASA. So it is going to be the task of a lot of us that are concerned about the U.S. Space Station to try to keep it on track with the appropriate funding and still accomplish our goals of deficit reduction. So we come into this hearing with no small task. I don't want us to be back into the situation in 1957 when America suddenly found herself on the ground without a satellite and the radio frequencies were coming from Sputnik in October 1957. There is a new rapprochement between the Soviet Union and the United States. In part, this committee has been a part of that when we took this committee, ever so slightly cracking that door open on the question of international cooperation in space. But there is the hard reality of the global competitiveness as well, and, given the fact that the Soviets are in several generations of a Space Station, and now that MIR is up there occupied around the clock, around the year, should give us considerable pause for concern. So, Mr. Stofan, with that sobering reality, we welcome you and we ask you to share with us about your plans for the U.Š. Space Station. STATEMENT OF ANDREW J. STOFAN, ASSOCIATE ADMINISTRATOR FOR THE OFFICE OF SPACE STATION, NATIONAL AERONAUTICS AND SPACE ADMINISTRATION, WASHINGTON, DC, ACCOMPANIED BY FRANK MARTIN, DEPUTY ASSOCIATE ADMINISTRATOR FOR THE OFFICE OF SPACE STATION; THOMAS MOSER, DIRECTOR OF THE SPACE STATION PROGRAM OFFICE; AND MARGARET FINARELLI, DIRECTOR, POLICY DIVISION Mr. STOFAN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and members of the committee. I would like to introduce the statement and have it for the record and then summarize the statement. I would like to say one thing about the statement, though, before I do start summarization. I think that it is an excellent representation of why we are doing the Space Station. We are often asked that, and I think there is a very concise, clear message in the statement, and also it gives a very good status, a snapshot, of where we stand today on the Space Station. So I would like that submitted for the record. Before I go any further, I would like to introduce the head table. On my left is Dr. Martin, my deputy; on my right is Tom Moser, my deputy and program director. I would also like at this time to introduce Jim Odom. He, on April 2, will be the Associate Administrator for Space Station, and I'll be free; I'll be off doing something else. This is my last appearance before the committee as Associate Administrator for Space Station. I remember very clearly, when I accepted this job, I was in town-I came in on a Monday, and I think it was on a Friday we had our first hearing, and that was a rather interesting introduction to the world of Space Station. That was when we had the civil war going on, and I think Jim and I and Sam Phillips sat about 5 hours with your committee, and at the end of that I was ready to get back on an airplane and go back to Cleveland. I think over the last 2 years that-I think the relationships with this committee have grown and nurtured and become very-I think very pleasant to deal with. I think I have gotten to know the Members; I have gotten to know you, Mr. Chairman, very well. I think we have communicated with each other extremely well over the last 2 years, and, believe it or not, I am actually-today I was looking forward to coming over and having this opportunity to talk with you about the Space Station Program. I think I have developed some close relationships, working with members of this committee, and it has been most enjoyable. Today, I feel we are at a crossroads in the Space Station Program. We have a choice. We can assume the leadership as a spacefaring nation, or we can turn it over to someone else, and I really think that is where we stand today. We are here to review the Space Station Program and to ask your support of the fiscal year 1989 budget request and of the 3year rolling commitment to the program. This request is essential to the program if we are to move forward from design, definition, and actually in 1989 begin to build some hardware. We must ramp up; we can't sit at a flat level we are at now. We have frozen all of our contractors, we have frozen all of the civil servants at a given level, so we are kind of keeping the lid on the program. We cannot just stay in idle. I think the price you pay for doing that is the discouragement, that people would begin to say that it looks as if we're not really serious, and our best people would begin to leave the program. So it is very, very important to create the reality that indeed we are going ahead and are committing to go ahead with the program. This request for the Space Station itself is essential for us to regain leadership in space. Now how do we do this? The Space Station is-we are doing it for many purposes. It is a research laboratory in space, it is a stepping stone to the future. That is, if we are to implement a space policy of manned exploration of our solar system, the Space Station is an absolute necessity where we can test systems and people to qualify them to go out into our solar system. It is an investment in new technologies and also in the competitiveness of this Nation, and, as you pointed out, this will be a clear response to the Soviets and their MIR Space Station. The Space Station is about the future, the 1990's and on into the next century. The Space Station is a permanently manned presence that is vital to any space-faring nation. The President's new space policy recognizes this. It reaffirms very strongly a commitment to the Space Station. It establishes the goal of expanding man's presence beyond the earth orbit and, again, which only a station can allow that; and, again, it reaffirms a commitment to the commercial endeavors to be followed with the Space Station Program. We have, over the past year, made a great deal of progress. It seemed that it was forever to get it started, but once we did break it loose, get it redefined, get it scoped, the program has moved very, very rapidly. The hardware contractor-the four major contractor teams are selected, and they are at work. The technical management information system, the software support environment, that are so necessary to manage this program, our contractors are in place and that is functioning. In fact, with the technical management information system we just had a review on the Block 1 by an outside committee under the NASA Advisory Council, and they totally endorsed the TMIS and said, in their estimation, we cannot do the program without it and strongly urged us to proceed into the next block in implementing the system. As you remember, the operations concept; we had a task force. come in in late 1986, and they worked through until half of 1987, came in with an operation concept, has been defined, has been baselined; the details of that are being worked out with the other parts of the agency. Transportation requirements were re-examined. We were in the process of doing this when the NRC review committee took place this past summer. They got into quite a bit of depth in the transportation study. That was a very, very detailed study. Now as far as the NRC report itself, I think we have implemented an agreement with about 95 percent of their recommendations. I think the bottom line, their conclusion, was that the Space Station was vital and that the configuration we had was the right configuration and it was sound. |