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of oil equivalent per year of energy consumption to support a population of that magnitude at a decent standard of living is such a horrendous number in terms of size-it is more than all the proven reserves in the Middle East today, twice as much as all the oil we have used in that entire history of the petroleum age in the entire world. It is a third of all the estimated total recoverable oil that we have on the entire globe-and that's just 1 year's worth of consumption.

So when I began to look at those numbers on the resource side and then I look at the inverse, because whenever we convert energy—even if we get beyond the fossil age and go to fusion or advanced fission forms and so forth, then you have another problem-and that is the output of waste heat and the contaminants of waste material. Even if you were to have somehow enough scientific progress to implement nearly the second law of efficiencies, you would still have this horrendous waste heat by-product of energy conversion that is pretty questionable at the moment.

It is questionable as to whether this envelop that we have in the global system could absorb this much waste heat. It would be about 2,100 quads per year of waste heat even at high levels of conversion efficiency. So when you look at those levels, it seems to me those are the underpinnings of the case that you are making.

What I would like you to do is maybe elaborate a little more on that in terms of some of the thinking you have done and then give some estimation as to whether or not you feel that this is cause for acceleration in terms of studying the feasibility and then beginning a sequential development program.

Obviously the kinds of numbers I am throwing around are going to occur somewhere, maybe 2050 or maybe more than a century away. Could you comment on some of this?

Dr. O'NEILL. Yes, I think I can verify your numbers roughly as close as my memory will allow, and at the same time could comment on the remarks made by Dr. Handler, with which I certainly agree.

The problem of the next 10 years is not a problem that is going to be solved by any new technology for energy production. But after that decade the problems get worse, not easier.

And if in that period we can bring in a new energy source, and can knock down its costs low enough, then it will be interchangeable with all other forms of energy including oil.

The Edison Electric Institute studies anticipate a more rapid percentage growth in electric energy usage than in the usage of other forms of energy, because EEI recognizes that, as Dr. Handler has said, we are now running on irreplaceable resources, fossil fuels. As we use up more and more of the easily recoverable fossil fuels their prices are bound to rise.

At a certain point there will be a cross-over, and if we can bring in a new unlimited source of energy that is cheap enough, then in fact we can make clean-burning artificial fuels that can end the fossil fuel problem forever. That's a long time off. We are not promising that

soon.

I agree that in about one century we will hit the heat barrier no matter what we do. And I should comment that if satellite power does work-and there are certainly lots of "ifs"-it will be the most environmentally acceptable way of obtaining energy for our use, in terms of the heating of the biosphere.

Satellite power could bring in a kilowatt of energy to the power line with a loss of no more than 200 watts as waste heat, because the efficiency of conversion of microwave energy to electricity is 80 percent. From a heat-load viewpoint the worst form of energy of all, strangely enough, is solar electric power on the surface of the Earth, because you have to nearly blacken the Earth in order to get that power. The efficiency is only 15 percent. That means that for every kilowatt you put on the powerlines you dump another 5 or 6 kilowatts into the biosphere. Per useful kilowatt, terrestrial solar power puts a 6 kilowatt heat load on the biosphere, compared with only 1.2 kilowatts for satellite power.

We do not propose to go ahead full tilt on a fixed program at the present time. That is why, to the surprise of one of your colleagues, I said that our desperate need is $1 million in this next year, not $1 billion.

We don't want a precisely prescribed program that we will never deviate from. We are just not that smart. We need a general plan of action, that we can correct and improve as we learn. And we do need urgently to regain the momentum we had up until last autumn. Our tasks during this year should be to regain and increase the momentum in research, and to plan the detailed research of the following years. That would be at a higher level, but still at a scale of millions, not billions. It will take about 3 years of that kind of work before we know enough more so that a responsible group such as this one, and a President, could make a decision whether to go ahead on something that would really be a large investment.

Mr. STOCKMAN. Thank you.

Mr. TEAGUE. Mr. Scheuer.

Mr. SCHEUER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I think we all feel a sense of frustration that Congressman Frey expressed at the diminishing level of R. & D. and at the apparently diminishing commitment on the part of the executive branch.

I suppose those of us who are on this committee have a feeling that these. R. & D. efforts are important. If we did not feel they were important, I suppose we would prefer to serve on another committee.

But the fact that we are here means that we find it challenging, stimulating and satisfying to feel that we are part of a process which is leading to these great breakthroughs in pure theoretical research and the space applications.

But I can say as a Congressman coming from New York City it is difficult to convince my people, at a time when we are firing teachers and policemen and the whole fabric of city life seems to be disintegrating, that it is particularly relevant to them, the people who elected me, for me to be supporting programs at what are to them orders of magnitude that are incredible, the funding levels we are talking about. They don't distinguish that much between millions and millions. It is just an awful lot of money being spent out there when we need a copy on the corner.

So what I would like to ask each of you is, can you enlarge on what the possible payoffs might be in the applications of both the pure research as well as the applied-the applications of the pure research out there, the problems we are wrestling with here in our domestic economy; what conceivably could be the payoff in better communications, better transportation, improved computer capability, et cetera?

Are there any applications to the delivery of human services in the field of law enforcement, health, welfare, education, and so forth?

Can you give us some ammunition we can give to our people saying, "Well, it is not just knowledge for the sake of knowledge, although we believe in that." I myself can justify what you are doing, just knowledge.

Dr. O'Neill and I went to the same college. I think maybe we learned a little of that at Swarthmore College, but I think we all feel in this room that we would support these programs just for the sake of the knowledge and we sort of have a visceral feeling that somehow or another there will be a payoff with incredibly exciting theoretical breakthroughs. But we have to give our people a little something in order to justify these expenditures.

Perhaps could you elaborate here or prepare something to submit? I am sure the chairman would let us hold the record open for some days.

Can you give us some further elaboration of where the payoffs are here on Earth?

Ms. HUBBARD. I would like to briefly respond on two levels

Mr. TEAGUE. Barbara, we have a yea and nay vote on the rule, and I think we must stop for a few moments. There are a number of members who have questions, and so I think we will come back in 5 to 10 minutes.

[Recess.]

Mr. TEAGUE. The committee will come to order.

Mr. Watkins.

Mr. WATKINS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I have been looking forward to saying a few words, being the low man on the totem pole

Mr. SCHEUER. If the gentleman will yield, didn't we cease operations here at a point where the witnesses were about to answer a question of mine?

Mr. WATKINS. I will wait for a while.

Mr. SCHEUER. If the gentleman will hold, I would be grateful.

Ms. HUBBARD. There are many answers to your question, but the one I would like to bring out particularly, if you are from New York City, is the fact that we are approaching a welfare economy, and it is humiliating to the people on welfare and the people who have to pay for it, and the only way out in the long run is to have a more productive economy, which means new projects and particularly opening up the space frontier. New jobs could be created quite quickly from the beginning of a startup of a commitment to the kind of goal we are calling for.

I think it would be particularly important for black people and for young people who right now, when you come to think of it, have very little to look forward to in terms of expanding opportunity.

Secondly, I think the deeper feelings for mothers and fathers who are bringing children into this world, that those children are going to have a better future and that you are helping them get it, if you learn to put that in simple words, will affect a very large percentage of the

voters.

And then I would like to conclude this answer by saying that due to the resolution which Chairman Teague has introduced, you now can

get answers to these questions by the study that OTA has been requested to do on the resolution.

There is no reason for these answers not to be made very clear to you, and I very much hope that will happen.

Mr. SCHEUER. Would any of the other scientists among us respond? Dr. O'NEILL. Two points. One is that if the reach toward the High Frontier goes beyond the study phase, and there are many dollars involved, we already know where they will be spent: here on Earth. It is worth emphasizing that they are not going to be thrown away in space. You don't spend money in space. You spend it on jobs here on the ground.

The second question is: Are those jobs going to go into expanding an economy, expanding a productive capability in such a way as to generate more jobs later on, or is that money simply equivalent to a welfare payment? Many of us feel we will be buying strong industrial and economic growth with every dollar spent in a program of that kind.

But we are the enthusiasts, and that's why in my testimony I used words like "objective" and "separate." Those judgments have to be made by a separate group like, for example, OTA.

Mr. SCHEUER. In addition to the job-creating potential of the space programs, are there applications of the technology of the systems you develop to the solution of urban problems, let us say, the problems with which we are wrestling in our society?

Dr. O'NEILL. I believe there are, sir. One example-and also an example of some of the mistakes that have been made by the Government in the past-is our serious problem of urban transit in this country. There was good research going-I was not a part of it myself, but I've studied it on new types of transport systems.

Mr. SCHEUER. If you could develop a people-mover that would shove us around the way that thing moved in that picture, it would be priceless. [Laughter.]

Dr. O'NEILL. I don't think you would want to take 35 gravities of acceleration. [Laughter.]

But interestingly enough, the science and technology that went into that first working model of the mass driver came straight out of a prior program, originally supported by the Department of Transportation and then later by the National Science Foundation, on magnetically supported trackless trains. That would have given us trains moving at 200 miles an hour without having your bones shaken the way you do between New York and Washington at half that speed right now.

Unfortunately, by joint action of Bureau of the Budget and Department of Transportation, the decree came down, "What's wrong with steel wheels on steel rails," and all such research was stopped.

But in Japan and Germany, programs at $100 million per year levels have gone on in the meantime. And a few months ago the Japanese announced the first successful test of a full-size vehicle operating with no visible means of support, no contact with the track.

The point there is that if we abandon the leading edge of new technologies, they don't just stop. Other people pick them up and develop them. Then 10 or 20 years later when we do finally recognize their worth, we have to buy back these technologies from the people who

do go ahead and develop them, and that's much more expensive. We pay out hard currency where we could be earning it.

Mr. SCHEUER. Dr. Handler.

Dr. HANDLER. I didn't know whether your question was about science generally, space science in particular, or the particular set of subsciences my colleagues have been talking about.

Mr. SCHEUER. Certainly the kinds of programs you have been dealing with, Dr. Handler, I would ask that question. But let us say the whole area of space sciences as a totality.

Dr. HANDLER. Well, the first response is like Mr. O'Neill's. We didn't leave any dollars on the Moon or on Mars. Every nickel of that is spent, well spent, in the United States and had all the multipliers you get from any such activity. It created jobs all over the country. At the height of the Apollo program, there were about 400,000 people employed one way or another.

Today it is 150,000. That money ripples through the society.

Second, I guess you have to live with our articles of faith. They have worked so far. By in large the fact that—not for all of those folks in New York, some of whom are in great difficulty-but for 80 percent of all Americans we live better than human being have ever lived anywhere at any time before, and we owe that very largely to the backdrop of science and the technology.

If you don't believe that process will continue, I don't know how to prove it.

Mr. SCHEUER. I think we do believe and it is perfectly obvious that that is true in terms of R. & D. directly applied to producing things and machines and manufacturing services and facilities and projects. Dr. HANDLER. But as to space science specifically, that kind of space science in which we want to put up a large space telescope and see what we can learn about the future of the cosmos, there are two answers: The first of these is, we will have to find our return in pure intellectual satisfaction, in terms of the information to be gotten. Meanwhile, it. is the most profound single challenge the Shuttle has and it will force the edge of Shuttle capability, what we can do with the Shuttle and what we can make man do with space. One cannot predict the consequences of thus forcing a new technology. Those are two aspects of that program.

The studies which have been done of the Earth's immediate environment have had real payoff. If it hadn't been for the space science undertaken to understand that near Earth environment, few of our satellites that are working would be useful to us; not the communications ones, not the Landsat ones, not the ones that we use for both military and civilian purposes, not the weather satellites. None of those would be working today successfully if we had not conducted this previous program of space science. That came as a surprise. We didn't know that these applications were in store at the time. We didn't know what we had to learn and we were very fortunate to have lucked out and gathered the right information so that it could be transferred. That is a very big bonus.

If nothing ever happens but successful 1-week weather forecasts routinely, that would be a huge bonus to the United States. What it would do for American agriculture alone is stupendous.

If we had longer term forecasts which were meaningful-the real goal of the NASA Climate program-then New York might have had

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