but I think we can do this over the next several months, and I'm looking forward to the opportunity to do it.

Dr. PRESS. Your remarks, sir, please me very well, because I think you understand the philosophy of the process we used in developing the kinds of programs that you heard about this morning.

you

I mentioned to you earlier, but I think the rest of the committee would like to know that, for example, in the climate area, in which have played a leading role, the administration is coming forward with a coordinated governmentwide program with a designation of a lead agency and with a budgetary increase for climate research of nearly 40 percent. I think this is an indication of how congressional initiative and interest has sensitized the administration and we have responded in a very favorable way.

Mr. BROWN. I am particularly interested in the difficulty you are having in reconciling jurisdictional problems between the civilian agencies with regard to our capabilities in space and whether or not we can reach a satisfactory resolution.

One of the things the committee has been concerned about is the preponderance of the space budget which is now in the Defense Department as concerned with the civilian sector. I wonder if you could comment on whether that problem can be resolved in a reasonable way.

Dr. PRESS. A number of people have asked me the same question and there have been a number of newspaper articles along the same lines. The commitment of the administration to protect NASA and its civil programs and to keep it distinct from the defense, the national security area, is a strong commitment and we are all conscious of it.

I have been to many committee meetings where this issue has been discussed, where Dr. Frosch has been present, and I can report to you that he has been very zealous in protecting this agency's civil role and also very successful.

I think every student of the subject would recognize that there have to be some areas with overlapping interests and jurisdictions, and those are the most difficult ones. We are setting up a mechanism to deal with that. But in doing all of this, we are cognizant of the role not only of NASA but of Department of Interior. Agriculture, and the foreign aid organizations, and their interest in this strong commitment to civil space programs.

From my examination and close contact with the NASA senior officials I don't feel that there is any justification to the claims or statements that they are being taken over or that their missions are being taken away from them by defense-oriented agencies. I just can state categorically that that is not happening.

Mr. BROWN. What about the resolution problem? In many of our satellites where we want to get detailed information about the Earth's surface, we obviously get into a situation where we accumulate information with defense implications. That is a technological problem. So an underdeveloped world that wants detailed maps or wants to determine the details of its cities, to get that information of the resolution that is most useful to them you also get defense information that has a very definite bearing on their security.

Can that problem be resolved?

Dr. PRESS. I think that in the foreseeable term the kind of resolution that's needed for crop evaluation, for environmental monitoring, for

mineral resource exploration that kind of resolution does not overlap the kind of resolution that is required for defense and national security purposes. So I don't see a conflict in that respect. We are sorting out this question right now for the President at his request, but I think we have a long way to go before we encroach on the kind of resolution that is of interest to defense interests.

Mr. BROWN. Let me talk for just a moment about a parochial problem. In California we have an interest in participating in the Syncom IV satellite, the communications satellite. The State government in California feels and many of the people who are concerned with our problems feel that there is a tremendous value to the State in participating in this communications satellite and that it would have direct immediate monetary value in a number of State programs.

Is there any problem that I'm not aware of with regard to this type of sharing of a national program and capability with a State which desires to participate in it?

Dr. PRESS. The Syncon IV project is an example of one where there are many agency interests and we have coordinated that and we have acted as a catalyst, more so than anybody else in Government.

Mr. Smith has played a leading role, and I will turn to him for an answer to your question.

Mr. SMITH. What we have attempted to do with Syncom IV is to explore the possibilities of taking a proposal made by the Hughes Aircraft Co. for a platform on one of the orbiter test flights and see if it can be expanded, so to speak, to include some capability in public service communications.

The basic Hughes proposal was in response to a NASA offering for participants in the six test flights of the orbiter. We have talked extensively with a variety of agencies whose interests show, I think, how broad the interest in public service satellite communications is. The group of Federal agencies includes the AID, the National Institutes of Education and other elements of HEW, the Veterans' Administration, the Department of the Interior, with its interest in the Pacific Trust Territories, for example, the Appalachian Regional Commission, the Public Service Satellite Consortium and the State of California itself, which has expressed a strong interest in coming forward and participating. In fact, there is in this year's budget before the California Assembly, $6 million for this purpose.

There are several interesting kinds of problems that illustrate the gap between where we are with technology and where we are institutionally in terms of putting this kind of thing together.

I think that we may not have the broad satellite service that we would had hoped we would put together for this purpose. For example, if you serve some of the interests of an agency like AID, which is interested in the Sahel area, then you limit the western capabilities in the Pacific, and Interior loses interest, so we may end up with less than the total number of agencies I have mentioned.

There is a problem in this that is related to the Federal relationship to the Hughes Aircraft Co., in that we must be mindful of the fact that insofar as Hughes makes an offering in which there is some substantial. corporate investment of its own resources, this might be workable. If the Government has to pay the full cost, and there is a proposal for cost recovery to a large and substantial extent by Hughes, I think

our view is that we must take a different route in trying to work this

out.

But we are very interested in this. Dr. Frosch is very interested in it, and if this particular proposal in its broadest sense does not go forward, I think there is still a good possibility that California will participate in a more modest version of Syncom IV. We will continue to try to work on another experiment with public service satellite. activities.

Mr. Brown, I would like to follow up on this because it might be a prototype for solving some of our institutional problems.

If I may ask just one more question, I understand that there are plans-I am a little hazy on this, and correct me if I misstate themfor the deployment of a substantial number of environmental monitoring platforms which would be connected communicationswise through communications satellites, so that there would be some sort of automatic readout of environmental data, and in effect we would develop a prototype or test for some sort of large-scale, perhaps even global monitoring system, using satellite capabilities.

Do I have a correct understanding of this? Are there plans going forward for something of this sort?

Dr. PRESS. To a certain extent, we are already trying that out in certain prototypes. For example, we are monitoring a number of volcanoes through the world by satellite communications systems as a means of warning of volcanic eruption.

I am not familiar with what you are proposing. Are you, Mr. Smith?

Mr. SMITH. No, sir.

Dr. PRESS. We could look into that.

Mr. BROWN. I understand this perhaps originates in the environmental satellite service at NOAA and includes platforms which can actually record data, and they would be at remote locations on the Earth's surface, and it would feed into a data-collecting satellite.

Mr. SMITH. One of the elements of the climate plan that we looked at and felt that there needed to be more work on related to the advantages of having monitoring network utilizing space capability versus the traditional surface monitoring systems.

In connection with the climate plan, as Dr. Press mentioned, there will be established the Department of Commerce lead responsibility under a new office. And one of its first missions will be to try to scope that out a little bit more thoroughly. It has a lot of potential.

Mr. BROWN. I had the feeling myself that it has tremendous potential.

Mr. Chairman, I won't take advantage.

Mr. FUQUA. Mr. Milford.

Mr. MILFORD. Thank you. Mr. Chairman.

Dr. Press, I am reluctantly going to have to join my colleagues in expressing a deep concern about the future of our space research. I particularly direct your attention to the first A in NASA, that being Aeronautics. Our aeronautical industry right now is facing an extremely serious problem. Several hundred jobs are directly in jeopardy as a result of these problems. More and more of our free enterprise aviation manufacturers and carriers are facing unfair competition from foreign, government-owned or government-subsidized aviation manufacturers and carriers.

In the past this country has literally dominated aviation because of our technological superiority and the technical gap is now closing at a very rapid pace.

For 1 year we have waited for recommendations from the administration for solutions to this national problem and yet today in your testimony you offer none. Nor do you even suggest that a program is coming up that would address the problem. Now, if the administration does not have suggested solutions to our aeronautical problems, this committee does. We spent an entire year carefully studying the problems I am addressing and offering recommendations in a report called The Future of Aviation. I have got copies of that report here and I will be glad to supply them to you.

I am concerned as to whether you are coming up with something. Dr. PRESS. I agree with you as to the importance of the American aeronautics industry. It is one of the best demonstrations of the great strength of American technology. It is one of the leading industries in terms of contributing to our balance of payments.

The space agency, going back to the early days of NASA, has had a traditional role of backup research for this industry on the longer term, socially useful research. And it can be demonstrated that the space agency's commitment has paid off in the form of technology that see today on some of the airplanes that are doing so well for us in our foreign sales.

The administration is committed to a continuing role for NASA to do the backup longer term research for this industry.

And the budget for aeronautical research and technology is going from $227 to $263 million, an increase of 16 percent, which is twice the increase of the overall R. & D. budget for the space agency.

Mr. MILFORD. Excuse me for interrupting, but this disturbs me. When you have $1 you are spending and you double it, it is $2. So when you use percentages of increase that are willfully low, it is nonimpressive.

Dr. PRESS. But these are the budgets that have been so successful in the past in developing new kinds of wings and new types of aircraft trainers and providing industry with concepts that have enabled them to achieve the leading role. So the kind of traditional role you speak of that the space agency has been involved with will be continued. In fact, we are increasing it, I consider, handsomely.

I agree with your goals and I think we are moving in that direction. Mr. MILFORD. In our studies we learned that things are not like they used to be; hence, we need to change and change drastically. Things aren't like they used to be in that you have foreign consortiums now, several countries banded together in a deliberate positive attempt to take away this country's lead in aeronautics. That was not so before. So vou have a new ball game that apparently you are not even recognizing because you say, well, we increase it a little and we will go on like we've been doing but that won't get the job done.

Dr. PRESS. Let me generalize your statement to the overall utilization of technology in American industry and the key of the Government. I think this is the key and von have mentioned the role of foreign governments in acting as patrons for technological innovations. We are going to the President to ask him to support a Cabinetlevel review of this very question of which aeronautics is one special case and an important one. We want to examine foreign incentives for

24-215 O - 78-17

guaranteeing the strength of American industry and its ability to be competitive and innovative. This is an issue whose time has arrived for a number of reasons and it is one which we are going to push very hard. Mr. MILFORD. I appreciate that very much, and I would like to be a part of it. I don't want to battle with you because it is a problem that Congress and the administration should sit down together and try to find an answer to.

I would be most amenable to that, but I am worried because I have not seen any evidence that anyone was moving. That is what was disturbing me and would like to work with you.

Let me make one final point here that is bothering me a little bit. In all of these hearings, including this one, we talk about the future of space and the far out things such as examining the ionosphere, and yet every time I go home I have a difficult time trying to sell to my constitutents that funding is necessary to do this research. They quite often say, why do we want to shoot to the Moon? We've already been there, and why do we need to spend $4 billion for these way out programs? And I'm wondering if in your house, the administration, and ours and NASA if we are doing enough to make people realize the bread-and-butter benefits that come from space. Instead of talking about the ionosphere, we maybe should be selling it on the basis of an improved 30-day weather forecast, which they could all relate to and

use.

In other words, we could real it out in the ways that people understand as opposed to scientists talking to each other.

Dr. PRESS. That's a very important point. Every time a scientist or engineer visits me and says the Government needs to do more for us, I tell them that they have to go out and tell the Nation why. That is, what are the results of this large Government support of their research programs. You have to explain it to the American people and you have to tell them what they're getting for their money. We cannot do enough of that. I am going to try to do more and I am sure the new NASA Administrators will certainly try to do more. I was heartened to see the results of the Harris poll the other day where the American people were asked about what they expected in the future of American institutions and science and technology ranked No. 1 in terms of the expectations of the American people. With that kind of support and with the kind of support expressed by this committee, I think we might go in somewhat the directions that you would like to

see us go.

Mr. MILFORD. Thank you very much.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. FUQUA. Mr. Scheuer.

Mr. SCHEUER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Dr. Press, I have two questions for you. I listened to Dr. Frosch discuss NASA's approach to solar power satellites and I may have missed the import of what he had to say but it seemed to me sort of a piecemeal approach and sort of a fainthearted approach. I didn't get much of a feeling of commitment or zeal. The solar satellite could be a possible solution to some portion and perhaps a significant portion of our energy problem and this should be a high-priority item. Sometimes when you don't go ahead, you make policy too. I get the feeling that Dr. Frosch didn't want to do anything until all of the feasibility analyses were in and the "i's" were dotted and the "t's" were crossed