[House Hearing, 106 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
DEPARTMENTS OF VETERANS AFFAIRS AND HOUSING AND URBAN DEVELOPMENT,
AND
INDEPENDENT AGENCIES APPROPRIATIONS FOR 2001
_______________________________________________________________________
HEARINGS
BEFORE A
SUBCOMMITTEE OF THE
COMMITTEE ON APPROPRIATIONS
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED SIXTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
________
SUBCOMMITTEE ON VA, HUD, AND INDEPENDENT AGENCIES
JAMES T. WALSH, New York, Chairman
TOM DeLAY, Texas 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
ANNE M. NORTHUP, Kentucky ROBERT E. ``BUD'' CRAMER, Jr.,
JOHN E. SUNUNU, New Hampshire Alabama
VIRGIL H. GOODE, Jr., Virginia
NOTE: Under Committee Rules, Mr. Young, 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, Timothy L. Peterson, Valerie L. Baldwin,
Dena L. Baron, and Jennifer Whitson, Staff Assistants
________
PART 1
NATIONAL AERONAUTICS AND SPACE ADMINISTRATION
________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Appropriations
________
U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE
64-676 O WASHINGTON : 2000
COMMITTEE ON APPROPRIATIONS
C. W. BILL YOUNG, Florida, Chairman
RALPH REGULA, Ohio DAVID R. OBEY, Wisconsin
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 STENY H. HOYER, Maryland
TOM DeLAY, Texas ALAN B. MOLLOHAN, West Virginia
JIM KOLBE, Arizona MARCY KAPTUR, Ohio
RON PACKARD, California NANCY PELOSI, California
SONNY CALLAHAN, Alabama PETER J. VISCLOSKY, Indiana
JAMES T. WALSH, New York NITA M. LOWEY, New York
CHARLES H. TAYLOR, North Carolina JOSE E. SERRANO, New York
DAVID L. HOBSON, Ohio ROSA L. DeLAURO, Connecticut
ERNEST J. ISTOOK, Jr., Oklahoma JAMES P. MORAN, Virginia
HENRY BONILLA, Texas JOHN W. OLVER, Massachusetts
JOE KNOLLENBERG, Michigan ED PASTOR, Arizona
DAN MILLER, Florida CARRIE P. MEEK, Florida
JAY DICKEY, Arkansas DAVID E. PRICE, North Carolina
JACK KINGSTON, Georgia MICHAEL P. FORBES,New York
RODNEY P. FRELINGHUYSEN, New Jersey CHET EDWARDS, Texas
ROGER F. WICKER, Mississippi ROBERT E. ``BUD'' CRAMER, Jr.,
GEORGE R. NETHERCUTT, Jr., Alabama
Washington MAURICE D. HINCHEY, New York
RANDY ``DUKE'' CUNNINGHAM, LUCILLE ROYBAL-ALLARD, California
California SAM FARR, California
TODD TIAHRT, Kansas JESSE L. JACKSON, Jr., Illinois
ZACH WAMP, Tennessee CAROLYN C. KILPATRICK, Michigan
TOM LATHAM, Iowa ALLEN BOYD, Florida
ANNE M. NORTHUP, Kentucky
ROBERT B. ADERHOLT, Alabama
JO ANN EMERSON, Missouri
JOHN E. SUNUNU, New Hampshire
KAY GRANGER, Texas
JOHN E. PETERSON, Pennsylvania
VIRGIL H. GOODE, Jr., Virginia
James W. Dyer, Clerk and Staff Director
(ii)0
DEPARTMENTS OF VETERANS AFFAIRS AND HOUSING AND URBAN DEVELOPMENT, AND
INDEPENDENT AGENCIES APPROPRIATIONS FOR 2001
----------
Wednesday, March 15, 2000.
NATIONAL AERONAUTICS AND SPACE ADMINISTRATION
WITNESSES
DANIEL S. GOLDIN, ADMINISTRATOR
BRIAN KEEGAN, CHIEF ENGINEER
MALCOLM PETERSION, COMPTROLLER
EDWARD WEILER, ASSOCIATE ADMINISTRATOR FOR SPACE SCIENCE
GHASSEM ASRAR, ASSOCIATE ADMINISTRATOR FOR EARTH SCIENCE
JOSEPH ROTHENBERG, ASSOCIATE ADMINISTRATOR FOR SPACE FLIGHT
SAM VENNERI, ASSOCIATE ADMINISTRATOR FOR AEROSPACE TECHNOLOGY
Chairman's Opening Remarks
Mr. Walsh. Good morning. The hearing will come to order.
This morning we would like to welcome Mr. Dan Goldin, the
Administrator of the National Aeronautics and Space
Administration for the committee's first hearing on NASA's
budget and programs.
Last year the Subcommittee was placed in a very difficult
position when we started putting our bill together. We were not
given sufficient funds to provide for the necessary increases
in veterans' medical and housing certificates and still
maintain other programs under our jurisdiction at the levels
requested. We had to make very difficult choices, and that
included substantial cuts to the NASA budget.
As the year progressed, we were given more resources, and
we were able to, in the end, provide NASA with $75 million more
than the budget request.
In addition, the fiscal year 2000 supplemental we put
together last week provides NASA with $75 million to address
urgent and emergent personnel needs, shuttle upgrades, and
science program requirements. I hope we don't have to repeat
what we went through last year, but I am not very optimistic
based on the proposals coming out of the Budget Committee. So I
think everyone should prepare for a bumpy ride again this year.
The fiscal year 2001 budget request for NASA is $14
billion, an increase of more than 3 percent when compared to
the fiscal year 2000 appropriation. I am pleased to see that
NASA has provided an increase of over 6 percent for science,
aeronautics, and technology programs. Last year the aerospace
technology component of this account was decreased by about
$300 million in the President's budget. We thought that was too
much, and we were able to add back about $120 million for a few
focused efforts.
This year's budget request for aerospace technology has a
further growth of $70 million in funding, but, more
importantly, the budget includes a well-defined plan for the
development of space launch vehicles, and we look forward to
hearing more about that.
Other major changes in the Science and Technology account
include an increase of over 9 percent for space science
programs and 10 percent for life and microgravity sciences. I
am disappointed that we are still waiting to launch the Russian
service module. While delays in that launch have afforded us an
opportunity to complete additional integration testing on
follow-on components, we need to make progress this year in
assembly of the International Space Station.
I hope to go to Russia in the coming months to convey in
person my wishes to see Russia maintain its position as a full
partner in the International Space Station. At the same time, I
will convey that they have to keep their commitments if that
partnership is to remain intact.
We cannot continue to have delays, and we need to have a
firm commitment on the support that Russia will be able to
provide during the continued assembly and operations.
I would at this time ask my colleague and friend, Mr.
Mollohan, if he has any opening statement.
Ranking Member's Opening Remarks
Mr. Mollohan. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Goldin, welcome to the subcommittee. I understand it
has been an interesting year at NASA. You and your staff had
some good news and some real achievements. Several new missions
were launched, Landsat-7, Terra, the Chandra X-ray Observatory,
and Stardust, among others. The Hubble space telescope has been
producing valuable scientific results. The Mars Global Surveyor
continued its mapping and successful shuttle missions were
flown.
At the same time, we are all aware you also had some real
reverses such as the Mars Climate Orbiter, the Mars Polar
Lander, and its two associated Deep Space probes. The Space
Station schedule has continued to slip, and wiring and other
problems were found in shuttle orbiters. Hopefully, that run of
bad news is nearing an end. The space shuttle is flying again,
and it looks like Space Station assembly may be getting back on
track in a few months as the Russians work through their
problems.
And I am impressed by the number of independent reviews
that you have commissioned to try to figure out why things have
gone wrong, when they have gone wrong, and how to put them
right.
You are bringing this subcommittee a budget that calls for
the first substantial spending increase for NASA in a number of
years. I think that budget request is a welcome sign of the
Administration's confidence in NASA, despite recent problems,
and a recognition of the importance of the scientific and
engineering work that NASA does.
I hope that this subcommittee will be able to provide NASA
with a real funding increase this year, and I think many of my
colleagues share that hope. However, I am beginning to wonder
whether we will have an opportunity to do so. As the chairman
alluded, the cause of my concern is the annual budget
resolution that the House Budget Committee will be taking up
later today. As I understand it, the Republican leadership has
agreed on a budget plan that calls for total nondefense
appropriations to be lower in fiscal year 2001 than they are in
fiscal year 2000.
If the majority leadership is determined to shrink overall
domestic appropriations and if they are able to maketheir
decision stick, I don't see how there can be much of an increase in
appropriations for NASA. Instead, this subcommittee will have a hard
time preventing another round of cuts in NASA's budget as well as the
budgets of other agencies under our jurisdiction.
I fundamentally disagree with the majority leadership's
attitude toward the domestic budget. In this era of continued
prosperity and record high budget surpluses, I don't see why we
cannot have modest growth in overall appropriations so that we
can provide modest funding increases in a number of areas, NASA
and other scientific programs among them.
That is the debate that will be occurring in the coming
weeks. Frankly, in my opinion, that debate about overall budget
policy may have as much an effect on NASA's funding as anything
we do here in this subcommittee. But today we are here to talk
about the specifics of NASA, and having said just a bit about
the larger budget context, I now look forward to your
testimony.
Mr. Walsh. Mr. Goldin, please proceed with your statement.
Mr. Goldin. Mr. Chairman, I would like to submit my formal
comments for the record and just summarize.
Mr. Walsh. Without objection.
nasa budget
Mr. Goldin. Mr. Chairman, this is a great budget. The
fiscal year 2001 request of $14,035,000,000 is an increase of
3.2 percent over last year's appropriation and reflects future
year increases that exceed the rate of inflation.
nasa accomplishments
With each year, the record of NASA's accomplishment grows,
and the promise of the future gets brighter. This year is no
exception. We began the year with the launch of Deep Space One,
a mission to test 12 revolutionary technologies necessary for
the future of space science. We began deployment of the EOS
series of satellites with the launch of Landsat-7 followed by
Terra, the flagship EOS satellite, QuikSCAT and AcrimSat. We
launched the first International Space Station assembly
missions. The Hubble Space Telescope found the value for how
fast the universe is expanding after 8 years of painstaking
measurement and debate.
nasa losses
In 1999, we also experienced some severe disappointments
and problems: the back-to-back losses of the Mars Climate
Orbiter and the Mars Polar Lander and Deep Space-2 probes,
wiring problems and a hydrogen leak in the shuttle, and a
failure of the X-33 composite tank to pass qualification tests.
1999 was marked by continuing launch vehicle failures that
directly and indirectly impacted NASA programs. The Russian
Proton failures have had a significant impact on the readiness
to launch the service module. The Japanese, Europeans, and the
United States struggled mightily to achieve safe and reliable
access to space, and only a few days ago, the Sea Launch
vehicle experienced another failure.
independent reviews
A number of independent reviews have been commissioned to
examine these problems, search for root causes, and recommend
changes. We worked closely with the Department of Defense and
others on the broad area review of DOD space launch failures.
And NASA chartered reviews of the shuttle wiring problems and
the Mars Surveyor program failures.
I commissioned the Mars program independent assessment team
led by Tom Young to review and assess the entire Mars program
architecture, management, content, and recent failures. I
anticipate release of Tom Young's report by the end of March
and will refrain from comment on it today.
An independent review of the X-33 tank failure is scheduled
to be completed within the next few months. During the last
week, NASA released reports of the Shuttle Independent
Assessment Team, the Mars Climate Orbiter Mishap Investigation
Board, and the Faster, Better, Cheaper review. Some findings
from these reports are:
One, there has been too much emphasis upon not breaking
cost and schedule barriers, particularly in planetary programs
with hard launch dates.
Two, in some cases, we have built up programs without
providing adequate training of our brilliant young employees.
Three, in some cases where problems have been seen, they
have not been communicated effectively up and down.
And, four, in some cases, people have not performed the
fundamental engineering and management principles proven over
the years, including the need for thorough, timely, and
aggressive peer reviews.
lessons learned
As has been the case at various times throughout the
agency's 40-year history, we are committed to learn everything
we can from the losses, alter our approach where it is prudent
to do so, and move on. NASA has undertaken the journey towards
revolutionary change with unbelievable support from this
committee, and we are resolved to continue to merit that
support because we will investigate ourselves with outside
people and do the right thing and be very open with the
American people and this committee.
We should not be prescriptive with the NASA workforce. They
have to have the freedom to learn and change. However, they
should abide by proven management and engineering principles.
As I said to the Congress in 1997, at NASA we do not shy away
from difficult missions. We have tremendous successes, but we
also have failures, and we must learn from our failures. Often,
the learning we do from our failures leads to greater successes
than we originally imagined. That is why it is important for
the young people to see NASA take risks. We want them to see
that we are not afraid of failure and that they should not be
afraid, either.
In fact, I want to publicly salute the Mars 98 team in
spite of their failures. They were pushing the envelope and are
enabling us to strive for even greater accomplishments in the
future. And I want to salute the entire NASA team, civil
servants and contractors, for the incredible job they have done
in the face of change and transition, the Faster, Better,
Cheaper.
As testimony to their performance, since 1993, NASA has
launched $18 billion in payloads with a total loss measured in
about a half billion dollars. This is best in world performance
by any reasonable standard. However, at NASA, we don't look at
our success. We look at our failures because we learn from
those failures. We magnify those failures, and we bore in. That
is the right way to do things.
fy 2001 budget request
Mr. Chairman, NASA's many achievements and specific
disappointments are foundations upon which the fiscal year 2001
budget has been built. The President's fiscal year 2001 budget
request includes a $1.5 billion increase for space shuttle
safety improvements over 6 years to address space shuttle
safety improvements through hardware upgrades, personnel,
facility, and other space investments. These investments should
improve the space shuttle safety by a factor of 2, and I would
publicly like to thank the Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel that
has helped us formulate this and the McDonald Panel, which has
just released its report. Itgave us visibility into areas we
did not have.
In fact, some of the items they pointed out were inherent
design flaws put into the shuttle over two decades ago.
Funding is included for additional personnel at NASA's
Johnson Space Center in Houston, and this committee has been
generous in providing those funds. We told the committee that
if we found we had to cut too far, we would come back and tell
you. After internal and external reviews, we concluded that we
had cut too far.
This funding will stabilize and revitalize our workforce to
ensure that the right skills and staffing are in place to
operate the space shuttle safely and to launch and assemble the
Space Station. Thanks to support from the committee, the two
highest-priority shuttle safety ugrades have already been
initiated, and we are studying a broad range of other upgrades
for implementation by 2005. And I might point out in their
report, the McDonald Committee also zeroed in on one of the
upgrades that this committee supported. So we are getting a
head start on some of those upgrades.
international space station
This year will be a landmark year for the International
Space Station. We have confidence that the first crew will
begin to live aboard the Space Station. Because of Russian
Proton rocket failures, launch of the Russian service module
has been delayed until July.
new space launch initiatives
This budget also reflects robust funding for initiation of
a new space launch initiative long overdue for the United
States of America, with an investment of $4.5 billion over 5
years. The fiscal year 2001 also includes a broad range of new
initiatives and strengthening of other science and technology,
including additional funding for the Mars program in
anticipation of the findings of the various reviews.
Administrator Goldin's Closing Remarks
In closing, thanks to the support of the administration,
the Congress and this committee, and the hard work of our
talented employees, we have a budget that gives us the
opportunity to develop the science and technology for the
future. Because NASA does not think small, because we plan for
the long term, this budget is not designed for the next decade.
It is designed for the next millennium, and NASA and America
will lead the way.
Thank you. I will be happy to take your questions.
Mr. Walsh. Thank you very much. The statement will be
included in the record in its entirety.
[The information follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
nasa's successes and failures
Mr. Walsh. I would like to echo what my colleague, Mr.
Mollohan, said. Obviously, you have had many, many successes
this year, and all of your people are to be congratulated for
those, and also some failures. As you mentioned, we learn by
our mistakes.
It is absolutely the right view, because the laboratory
that space has provided us has given us the ability to test our
best and smartest people, and the benefits are accruing to this
country every day. I think it is safe to say that you have
strong support, certainly from the chairman and the ranking
member and the other members of this subcommittee.
shuttle independent assessment team report
I would like to ask a few questions that the Shuttle
Independent Assessment Team report provided. They included a
statement that conversion from the launch processing system to
the checkout and launch control system could pose an indirect
risk to shuttle safety if not appropriatly managed. It goes on
to state that during fiscal year 1999, when there were only two
launches, many systems engineers were working substantially
more than eight hours a day and questions the ability of
systems engineers to cope with the planned eight-launch
schedule for fiscal year 2000.
Last week, this Committee put together a supplemental
appropriation bill for fiscal year 2000 which includes funding
for about 300 additional end strength primarily for the shuttle
program.
In light of the assessment team report, is the augmentation
of 300 end strength sufficient to deal with the problems
identified? Could you also address the end strength needs you
will have in fiscal year 2001, taking into consideration the
findings of the assessment team?
Mr. Goldin. We agree with the findings of the assessment
team, and we recognized this problem earlier in the year based
on interaction with the Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel.
We undertook a core capability study that took a look at a
variety of the areas that we could identify for problems. Based
on the findings from all these studies, we found we were one
deep in 87 critical areas, that is, there was one person
without a safety net underneath them, which created an
unacceptable condition. And then we also recognized that we
were going to increase the staffing needs because of the
shuttle upgrades, and we needed an ability to assign
engineering to shuttle upgrades without interfering with the
ongoing activities.
So it became very clear that we would have to have more
staff, and as a result, we requested 282 FTEs in fiscal year
2000, which has 95 allocated to the shuttle. And we feel this
is the right level of activity. And in fiscal year 2001 in our
budget request, we ask for 668 FTEs, and the shuttle would have
278. So the endpoint ends up to be about at the 300 that you
have included in your bill.
Mr. Walsh. The Shuttle Independent Assessment Team report
notes that in the process of correcting problems with wiring in
the shuttle fleet, visual inspection was used to determine
where the repairs were necessary. The concern of the team was
that visual inspection may miss up to 30 percent of the wiring
problems. What assurances can you give us that you have
identified all wiring deficiencies and the shuttle flight is in
a condition which makes flight less risky than was the case for
most of last year?
Mr. Goldin. Well, there are a couple of issues we have to
look at here. Another thing that the team pointed out was that
you have to be careful of the wear and tear that you have with
routine maintenance and inspections, and about, as you said, 30
percent were in areas where there were tight wire bundles,
which would mean to inspect it you have to takeit apart and put
it back together. So at the suggestion of the McDonald Panel, the
Shuttle Independent Assessment Team, what we did is we took a look
selectively at the Shuttle Columbia, which is in orbiter maintenance
down period in Palmdale, and when we opened up these inaccessible areas
just to check and see if we would have problems there, we found
virtually no problems. And that is logical because the problems we were
finding were due to all the work that was going on in the shuttle,
places where open wires could be inappropriately mishandled by people,
not intentionally, but we have to upgrade those procedures.
So we have a very high confidence that that will not be a
problem.
major launch initiative
Mr. Walsh. On another topic, NASA is about to embark on a
major launch initiative, one that asks this Subcommittee to
commit $4 billion over the next few years. How do you plan on
using those funds? Is it for one approach, similar to the X-33
program, or for numerous approaches?
Mr. Goldin. Well, this is a very comprehensive program. We
learned a lot of things on the X-33 and X-34 programs. There
are a number of key features to this program. There is a broad
range of competition. We want to have a diversity in technical
approaches in companies. We want big companies and small
companies, and we are working to bring the small companies into
it.
We want to work on critical technologies, not just
vehicles, and make those critical technologies available to a
broader range of companies. We want to build up the whole
launch industry in America because for too long it has been
dominated by a few big companies that are still flying 40-, 50-
year-old technology. And we also included in this launch
initiative an alternate access to the Space Station to get it
to take a chance--to take a look at some of the emerging ideas
from these emerging small rocket companies. So this allows us
to have a broader base.
It also includes the capability to help start-up companies
get the credibility of launching low-cost payloads where you
don't have a big loss so they could become eligible to compete
on NASA business. So we will take some very low-cost payloads
and take the risk of launching on these new vehicles so they
could say they flew a payload successfully and then step up the
chain. So it is a very broad, comprehensive program. It is
driving towards significantly improving the safety and
reliability, and our first goal is to improve the reliability
of the launch vehicles by a factor of 10 within 10 years while
at the same time improving the survivability for astronauts by
a factor of 100.
In 25 years, we expect to cut the launch costs by a factor
of 100 and improve the survivability for astronauts by a factor
of 10,000. So within a quarter of a century, we hope to have
rockets capable of having the same level of reliability as
long-haul jet transports.
rocket system suppliers
Mr. Walsh. Right now, as you know, we only have a couple of
suppliers for rocket systems. What in this program will provide
for those new start-up companies? What will provide the
encouragement, and how will you level the playing field between
the big suppliers and the start-ups?
Mr. Goldin. Well, recognizing this problem, I personally
had a meeting with nine of the CEOs of the small rocket
companies. We actually picked up the bill. And it was a very
illuminating meeting. They told us about some of the problems
they were experiencing. They needed access to NASA facilities
because they can't afford to go build the kind of facilities we
have. They need better access to NASA technology. They wanted
to have opportunities for test launches because they can't go
to the commercial sector if they don't have it, and if they
could fly a NASA payload successfully, it gives them a leg up
in the global marketplace.
So factoring all this in, I have asked Art Stephenson, who
is the Director of NASA Marshall, to personally visit each of
these companies, which he has already done, and then put
together a very aggressive plan for how we could engage these
small companies very proactively in this new space launch
initiative.
And we don't necessarily have to engage the companies in
building whole vehicles. What we would like to build is a broad
range of suppliers so we could put advance parts on the shelf
that they could then sell to other companies, and then
gradually build up a very aggressive leapfrog capability in
America.
Mr. Walsh. Well, that would certainly provide the
competition and the creativity that I think is needed to reduce
the cost of delivering projects to space. So we applaud that
effort.
I think I will hold my next few questions for the next
round, and I will yield to Mr. Mollohan. Thank you very much
for your responses.
space station assembly and operation
Mr. Mollohan. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Goldin, I know you touched on this in your testimony,
but could you please summarize for the subcommittee just where
we currently stand with respect to the schedule for assembly
and operation of the Space Station? If everything goes
according to the current plan and the Russians get the service
module launched in July, when would the first long-term crew
occupy the Station? When would research activities begin? And
when would the Station be able to accommodate a full-scale crew
and research operations? So, first of all, when would the first
long-term crew occupy the Station?
Mr. Goldin. This year. Late this year.
Mr. Mollohan. When would the research activities begin?
Mr. Goldin. Research activities would begin at a very low
level next year, and then ramp up as the capability went on the
Station.
Mr. Mollohan. And when would the Station be able to
accommodate a full-scale crew and research operations?
Mr. Goldin. Let me say we have aggressively worked the
schedule for what we call completion of Phase 1, which gets us
up to the lab and the airlock, which gives us that first
research capability, and it gives us the capability to have a
three-person crew. And that takes us through early next year.
We haven't worked the details of the schedule after that,
so I would like to have a chance to go take a look at the steps
that occur after that. But I can say that we are ahead of
schedule for all the elements that we have to launch through
the completion of Phase 2 of the program and that the Russians
are really done with the service module testing, but that they
want to test some more software with the available time to make
it more robust.
So we believe everything is in place to complete Phase 2,
and we are focusing on that. And then we want to see if we
launch the service module on time, and we will use that asa
point to establish when we will have that full six-person capability.
So we are trying to do our planning in steps and phases so we don't
have our people do a lot of exercises until we know for a fact that
that service module is launched.
paying russia for its contributions
Mr. Mollohan. To what extent has the U.S. Government been
paying Russia for its contributions to the Space Station? And
to what extent are Russian contributions being financed by
Russia?
Mr. Goldin. We have been buying very specific goods and
services from the Russians that we need, we negotiate fair
market value for them, and the Russian Government puts its
money in. We do not know how to convert rubles into dollars to
get the effectiveness of how the Russians work. They have a
system there that we just don't pretend to even understand. But
they do make significant contributions to that.
There is one concern that I have, however, and that is, the
key word is ``fair market value.'' Not cost but fair market
value, because we are dealing in a global marketplace.
Recently, the Russians announced that a Russian company--
R.S. Enegia announced that they had negotiated a deal with a
private U.S. company, and they were offering services for the
Soyuz vehicle that on the surface appear that they are charging
them a much lower price than they are charging--that they want
to charge us for the Soyuz. So until we get resolution of that
issue, we are not interested, willing, or able to even talk
about a Soyuz.
goods and services purchased from russia
Mr. Mollohan. In cases where the U.S. Government has
purchased goods and services from Russia, what has been their
performance record with regard to delivery?
Mr. Goldin. Their performance has been outstanding. In
fact, I would say when we buy specific goods and services from
the Russians, they are equal or better in performance to our
own U.S. contractors.
Mr. Mollohan. Can you give us examples of that?
Mr. Goldin. The functional cargo block was just a
terrifically designed and tested piece of equipment that just
did exactly what it was supposed to do on orbit, and they
delivered to the schedule that they said they would. That is
equal in size to any of the big modules that we have on the
Station.
Mr. Mollohan. So you think that is a good part of the
story?
Mr. Goldin. Yes, I think it is an outstanding part of the
story. I will give you another one. I think then Rockwell,
which is now Boeing, bought a tunnel for docking the shuttle to
the Mir Space Station. I think that that tunnel cost about $23
million, and we calculated it would cost us about $100 million
if we did it ourselves. It was delivered on time and it worked
every single time to the performance specification that we put
to it.
So, time after time, when we have bought specific goods and
services from the Russians, we got exactly what we asked for.
funds to russia
Mr. Mollohan. How confident are we that the funds provided
to Russia for various Space Station purposes have actually
gotten to the firms and subcontractors doing the work, rather
than possibly being diverted to other purposes?
Mr. Goldin. We have a set of audits that we do, and we have
our NASA team, our Comptroller's office, we have an independent
consultant--I believe it is Arthur Andersen--the IG, and they
just returned from Russia a month or two ago, and they traced
the money from America to the Russian Space Agency, from the
Russian Space Agency to be converted from dollars to rubles,
from that funding to the subtier suppliers, and they could find
no discrepancies. And if you would like, I will submit the
audit report for the record.
space station components
Mr. Mollohan. Are all the U.S. components for the Space
Station ready to go when they are needed?
Mr. Goldin. We believe at this point in time, through Phase
2, we are ahead of schedule for every single component. We just
completed about a month or so ago a very significant
integration test. It was the multi-element integration test for
all the elements that are going to be up there for Phase 2, and
we checked out the software and the hardware. We hooked it up
to Mission Control in Moscow and Houston, and we wrung out all
the equipment. And now we are in the process of doing final
checks and installing the equipment in the shuttle for launch.
The key linchpin is the service module. We believe the
service module is ready, but our mutual agreement with the
Russians, we said we did not want that service module launched
until we had about five Proton launches to make sure that we
had confidence in the Proton. So far, ever since they had that
Proton failure, so far they have had two successful launches.
One occurred last weekend. There will probably be another
launch of what they call the Phase 1, where they put special
filters in to prevent contamination in the engine. And then in
May and June, we will have launch of the Phase 2 engines where
they built the engines to be more robust and have a higher
operating temperature capability.
With the successful launch of those two Protons, we will
then be ready to launch sometime between July 8th and July 14th
of this year. So they are moving along exactly doing what they
said they would do.
component problems
Mr. Mollohan. Have you been experiencing problems with any
components?
Mr. Goldin. In fact, our people got back from Russia, and
they told us they were overwhelmed with the quantity of
hardware that the Russians use in their propulsion testing and,
in fact, indicated envy that they wished we could have that
kind of quantity of hardware here. We have learned some things
from the Russians and how they do things. So far we do not see
any problems with their hardware.
Mr. Mollohan. I actually was talking about our hardware,
U.S. components.
Mr. Goldin. U.S. components are in good shape. We had a
problem with a DC to DC power converter, and we were concerned
that that would cause some significant schedule delays. We
found the root cause of that problem. We are fixing it, and we
are on track. That was the only significant problem that was
looming over us, and right now, as far as I know, we have no
significant problems with the Phase 2 hardware or software.
international partners
Mr. Mollohan. Good. We hear a lot about the role of Russia
in the Space Station, and we may sometimes forget that there
are numerous other international partners in this endeavor.
Would you please briefly summarize who those partners are, what
they are contributing, and the status of their efforts?
Mr. Goldin. We have an incredible set of partners on the
Station, and the Europeans, the Japanese, and the Canadians
have been doing incredible work. But the intensityof focus
hasn't been on the great things that are happening. It is on the
problem areas, which is the rightful way to do it. But the Europeans
are building the Columbus module, which is a very large, significant
laboratory. It is on track and it looks like the hardware and software
is in good shape.
They are also building the Ariane transfer vehicle, which
is designed to give us another way of getting up to the Space
Station to complement the shuttle and the Russian vehicles.
That also is on track and moving forward.
There is a whole host of hardware like refrigerators and
Multiple Payload Logistic Module (MPLM). We have multi-purpose
logistics module. The Europeans and the Italians are supplying
three of them, and this is a way of getting cargo and other
materials up to the Station. They have delivered two of them,
and the third one is on its way. So the Europeans are right on
track.
The Canadians are building a very significant robot arm
that literally has the capability of picking up payloads and
moving it around the Space Station. But it doesn't stay in one
place. It is almost like science fiction. This arm, which is
about 50 feet, is able to walk right across the Space Station.
It also will have an SPDM, special dexterity--it is almost like
a human hand. It has the capability of doing things that a
human hand has. It is really cutting-edge technology, and the
Canadians will be providing this.
The actual robotic arm is all done, and now they are
working on this dexterous manipulator, which kind of simulates
a human hand. It is beginning to get into the field of what we
call biomimetics where we mimic biology to be able to do
things.
The Japanese are building--I am having trouble with my
acronyms--the Japanese module, the Japanese Experiment Module
(JEM), which is similar to the European module except it has an
outside deck where we could expose materials and do experiments
in the space environment. They are developing another transfer
vehicle that will give us alternate access to the Space
Station, and they are developing a centrifuge experiment which
we will be installing in the Station to do a lot of life and
microgravity science.
All these activities are on schedule, and it is just
wonderful working with this international partnership. It is a
major learning experience for America to have to integrate this
worldwide project, and we are beginning to learn about each
other, and our people have grown enormously. And I think this
in the long run is going to help America as we deal in complex
systems in the global economy, the learning experience of
managing such an activity.
international partners major problems
Mr. Mollohan. Are there any major problems associated with
the development by the international partners other than
Russia, of their particular projects?
Mr. Goldin. I don't know about any significant--oh, we left
out the Brazilians. The Brazilians are building some logistics
equipment in cooperation with American companies that are under
contract to them.
No, I don't know of any significant problems. I don't want
to call it ``problems.'' The issue that we have to deal with is
how do you bring a team of 15 countries together and have
everybody working in sequence where we maintain the important
things to each of the nations. You know, there are technologies
we have got to protect. There are national positions we have to
protect. There is constant change of governments, new
ministers, new heads of agencies, and maintain a core that we
always keep our eye focused on doing the task. And I am very
proud of this NASA team and our international partners. They
are doing that very well, but each and every day we have a new
challenge.
Mr. Mollohan. Thank you, Mr. Goldin.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Walsh. Thank you. We will go to the other members of
the Subcommittee.
Mr. Knollenberg.
successes and failures
Mr. Knollenberg. Mr. Goldin, welcome this morning. Good to
see you again, and I will just comment very briefly. I
recognize that it has been a year that has had some
frustrations. There have been successes. There have been
failures. But I don't think--I can't speak for the entire
committee, but I don't think any of us want you to do anything
but succeed in some of the things you discussed this morning
briefly. You indicate that you are moving in the direction that
I think most of us would applaud.
u.s. global change research program
Let me get into a couple of areas where I am a little gray
on, a little bleary on, so I would like to have your help in
terms of the issue, first of all, which is earth science. And
everybody knows that NASA is a research agency, spends a great
deal of time looking at outer space, but many people don't
realize that this agency spends a considerable amount of time
looking at our Earth. And one of your major divisions is the
Earth Science Division, which is the function of trying to
better understand the dynamics, the environmental dynamics of
our planet.
What I am concerned about--and it is a concern that maybe
you can alleviate--you obviously are familiar with the U.S.
Global Change Research Program, the USGCRP. Your agency has
responsibility for over, I think, about 60 percent. And what I
am interested in--and, by the way, it is a multi-agency
coalition which studies the climate. And since your agency does
the bulk of the work, you have the unique advantage of being
able to look at the Earth from space.
Needless to say, I have some concerns about the fact that
your fiscal year 2001 budget reduces by $38 million the amount
from the space-based observations category. What is the reason
for that reduction?
Mr. Goldin. We are in the process of taking a look at the
next generation of Earth-observing systems. But before I say
that, I would like to provide some context to your statement
about USGCRP. It is very important to understand we are a
research agency and we don't make policy. We try and get----
Mr. Knollenberg. And that is exactly the heart of my
question, because what concerns me a little bit--you just
touched on it. I don't want to interrupt here, but I look at
page 16--and I recognize you don't make policy, but if you look
at the strategy for achieving those goals that was brought into
the picture--and it is on 16 of your particular report--there
is one concern that I have. When I read this, it says, ``The
selection of scientific priorities and data products responds
directly to the USGCRP global change science priorities.'' And
it suggests that maybe the direction is coming down from above
and that NASA really isn't independent.
I heard you say just a moment ago that we shouldn't be
prescriptive about NASA, and I respect that; we should give the
NASA workforce the freedom to work, to develop. And you have
done that, I believe, and so my concern is so long as they have
that responsibility and that independence, fine, but if you
would, respond to that in that context.
Mr. Goldin. I thought that was the issue you----
Mr. Knollenberg. And I may have interrupted you needlessly,
but I just wanted to make sure.
Mr. Goldin. No, no, no. That is good clarification.
We participate in the USGCRP in looking at what are the
scientific challenges that we need to address. But we don't
take direction. We work with them, and if we believe it is the
right objective, we then go ahead and do it.
What we don't do--we provide the results of that science to
the entire community. In fact, we put it on the Internet.
Policy is then take up by the USGCRP and others, but we do not
make policy. We provide the scientific input. And, in fact, we
do peer review. We have people on both sides of the issues. For
example, Dr. Hansen at our Goddard Institute for Space Studies
in New York is on one side, and Drs. Spencer and Christy in
Alabama are on the opposite side of the issue.
We believe it is very important to fund in open competition
all ideas that are meritorious. So we try and have this
competition for ideas so all the facts are out there so
policymakers can then make decisions.
Mr. Knollenberg. Responding to the US--I get tangled on
this one--USGCRP.
Mr. Goldin. Yes, we have a lot of these acronyms.
Mr. Knollenberg. By the way, that organization has been
around since 1988, I know, but only of late has it really begun
to look for money. And I am concerned--my concern is not that
you provide information back to them, but are you taking
direction from them? Because it would occur to me that that is
not NASA's role as an independent agency. They should be
independent, and the concern I have goes beyond this. It goes
to the heart of is any activity, is any money being spent to
implement the Kyoto Protocol within the framework? And I see
somebody shaking their head back there. I am glad to hear that,
or see that. But we have had agencies, very honestly, that are
spending money by sending people to Europe, to various
symposiums around the country, that quite honestly violates, in
my judgment, the prohibition on spending for this purpose that
is in not just this bill but in six other--five other bills,
appropriations bills.
So I want to make sure that what you are doing is
independent of any direction from above, because you should
have that freedom. There should be sound science that you base
your activities on and, yes, respond to them, but do they
respond to you and say this is what we want you to do?
Mr. Goldin. NASA has no investment in implementing the
Kyoto Protocol. We do basic research that helps people
understand what are the forcings to our climate, how do you
make better climate and weather predictions, how do you use
space and aircraft resources to better understand our planet.
That is what we do.
Mr. Knollenberg. Is the sun a part of that, by the way? I
saw these pictures. I guess they are up there for a reason.
Mr. Goldin. You bet. I am glad you asked the question.
Mr. Knollenberg. That is something I am very interested in,
and obviously, I am sure you are, too.
Mr. Goldin. But there is one--before I get to the sun,
there is one other point I want to make. We go to the National
Academy of Sciences and ask them to review what we are doing.
They openly review it and openly put out reports on the quality
of work we do and the direction of work that we do.
I was about to answer the issue in our budget. Most of the
other budgets went up. Earth science did not. It did not
because we made a decision with the administration that we are
in the process of launching almost 30 spacecraft in the next 3
years. That is the first phase of the Earth observation system.
Mr. Knollenberg. How many this year, how many next year,
and how many in the third year?
Mr. Goldin. I think about eight this year. We had four or
five last year. And we will have 30 up. And before we go put
additional money in the budget so we will just be spending
money instead of thinking about it, we have asked our Earth
Science Enterprise, cooperatively with the administration, to
take a pause for a year and to take a look at the strategy of
what are the measurements we ought to make in the second
generation of Earth observation systems. And then we are going
to work with the National Academy and ask them to review it. We
will then come back to the administration after we have an
independent assessment by the National Academy and then propose
where the budget ought to go.
So we are taking a prudent pause because we want to have
that outside review of what we are doing, and I want you--I
hope this helps understand the process that we use.
terra launch
Mr. Knollenberg. This may be a little early, but I know
that Terra was just launched, I think in December. Maybe it is
early. But maybe you have some data from that. Could you share
that with us? Or is it too early?
Mr. Knollenberg. Your name sir?
Dr. Asrar. Ghassem Asrar.
Mr. Goldin. Do you want to talk into the microphone,
Ghassem?
Dr. Asrar. Good morning. Thank you for the question. Yes,
Terra is working flawlessly. It is in the same orbit with
Landsat-7. They are flying in tandem. We can basically bring
the two spacecraft together and view the same area of the Earth
by using both spacecraft. That is why it took a bit longer to
get into the right orbit.
We have acquired the first set of images, close to 10
terbytes of information. The scientists want to make sure that
the results are really checked out properly and verify the
results before they make them available. Currently we have
scheduled a science briefing in the middle of April, but the
first set of engineering results, images, are available on the
Web.
Mr. Knollenberg. On the Web.
Dr. Asrar. Yes.
Mr. Knollenberg. The Administrator said that. And I don't
know how much time I have, Mr. Chairman, but I know that we are
getting close, and I did want to hear your comments, and it may
have to be reserved for later on the issue of the sun as it
respects this issue.
Let mejust get very quickly----
living with A Star
I am glad to hear you say--I think I heard you say that
science determines your course, not the administration or not
somebody on high. And----
Mr. Goldin. We are driven----
Mr. Knollenberg. That is my question.
Mr. Goldin [continuing]. By scientific questions. We are
not driven by preconceived notions.
Mr. Knollenberg. That is pointed and that is good, period.
Could you briefly--or would it be appropriate to wait until
later? Because I would rather hear the story on the sun and the
recent view of the sun being responsible for climate.
Mr. Goldin. Well, I could do this in 2 minutes.
Mr. Knollenberg. Fair enough. Go ahead.
Mr. Goldin. We proposed a program called Living with a
Star. Our sun is a magnetically variable system. A few tenths
of one percent change in the energy coming from the sun could
have a huge impact on our climate. This is one of the areas we
want to understand because if we could understand and predict
the variability of the sun and correlate it with our
environment, we will get at one of the major forcings that
drive climate and weather.
The second forcing is what the human species is doing, and
the third is the natural forces here on our own planet, like
volcanoes and the huge biomass that we have.
This program, the sun right now--the sun puts out enormous
bursts of energy at different times that could shut down power
systems. We have brownouts and blackouts. It could shut down
the paging systems on spacecraft. It could impact our national
defense systems. And it could represent a danger if we send
astronauts to Mars.
So we started this program called Living with a Star to
understand our sun. Right now the best warning we have is about
an hour. In the limit, we hope to be able to understand this to
get as much as a 2-week warning on solar events, so-called
coronal mass ejections. There is an enormous amount of material
that comes out. We have just recently seen the back side of the
sun, but we are going to put spacecraft to look at the top, the
bottom, and have a set of solar sentinels to better understand
our sun because it is one of the biggest driving forces on life
on this planet.
Mr. Knollenberg. How long have you been into this program
investigating the sun?
Mr. Goldin. Oh, we have been looking at it for decades, but
this is----
Mr. Knollenberg. Concentrated now, though, right?
Mr. Goldin. This will be concentrated. We intend to have a
multi-agency effort. The Department of Defense is very
interested. The Department of Energy is interested, the
National Science Foundation, and NOAA, National Oceanographic
and Atmospheric Administration, and our international partners.
Mr. Knollenberg. My time has expired. I appreciate your
response, Mr. Goldin.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Walsh. Thank you.
Mr. Cramer.
nasa budget
Mr. Cramer. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Welcome back to the committee, Mr. Goldin. I have had the
opportunity to exchange information with you for the length of
time that you have been NASA Administrator, and that has been
forever.
Mr. Goldin. Please, please. [Laughter.]
Mr. Cramer. We have been through a lot of ups and downs,
and I want to talk to you about your budget this year. We have
the opportunity to finally have an increase in NASA's budget,
the first increase in 7 years, but it will be a challenge for
us to hold the administration's figures.
I think one of the primary challenges that NASA is facing
is reducing the cost of access to space, and this budget, if we
can maintain this budget, meets that challenge head on. It
provides an increase in funding for the second and third
generation launch technologies.
But I want you to talk to the committee about the
consequences of another flat budget, if we aren't able to don't
maintain this level of increase, and especially address the
impact that a flat budget would have on your employees. I am
concerned with the Marshall Space Flight Center in my district.
We have a low unemployment rate, and we have got defense
contractors and the private sector aggressively competing for
employees. And I just think Marshall is going to lose some of
those employees if we endure another year of flat budgets.
Could you discuss that with us?
Mr. Goldin. Sure. First let me deal with the technical
issues. This is the number one development priority for this
agency. Our priorities are fly the shuttle safely. So the first
thing we will protect is the shuttle budget and the shuttle
upgrades. Our number two priority is complete construction of
the Space Station. Our number three priority is have a
revolution that will improve the safety and cut the cost of
access to space. We are dealing with 40- and 50-year-old
technology today.
So this budget, if the budget is flat or cut, this would
probably be the first program to go. And we will have to have
delays or cancellations. And certainly it would also impact our
science program.
It is essential technology. We cannot go on--the space
shuttle is a wonderful machine. We have a reliability of
something like one part in 250 or 300 as a probability of
losing that shuttle. If you go into air combat training, I am
told by some of my friends in the military, the probability is
one in 20,000 that you will have--probability for loss of life.
And if you fly on a commercial airline, it is one in 2 million.
If we are going to have a space-faring Nation, we cannot
have this situation. We make the shuttle as safe as possible,
and we try and address things. But we need a revolution before
we try and send people into space on a routine basis.
We also are spending much too much money in our budget on
access to space, and that is the other reason we want to have
this initiative. It is crucial for American leadership in the
world, in the 21st century, not just for space science but for
commerce and for defense of the Nation. We are working together
with the Department of Defense on this initiative. We are
providing national leadership on reusable launch vehicles.
So this is absolutely essential, but as essential as itis,
if we get this budget cut again, we are going to lose it, at least for
this next year.
Secondly, with regard to the second question you asked, I
would like to thank you for asking it because we have to
compete with the dotcom companies. I have talked to presidents
of major universities who told me their students in computer
science and engineering are now getting unbelievable offers,
not just with high salaries but with equity, and people in
their mid-20s are becoming millionaires. In Silicon Valley, I
am told that every day there are 65 new millionaires. Sixty-
five. There are a large number of billionaires.
Now--what?
Mr. Knollenberg. I just said that yesterday they might have
dipped.
Mr. Goldin. They are going to come back. [Laughter.]
But NASA has something special, and people want to come to
work at NASA. But when these brilliant young people--and we are
out hiring them now--see the gyrations in the budget, they get
a very negative message.
Now, I understand the pressures in running the United
States Government, but we have to deal with this day in and day
out. And forget about the programs. My major plea is, at a time
when we are going to be hiring almost 2,000 people in the next
2 years, you are going to take a bucket of cold water and send
such a chill on--we want top in the class from the top
universities. We want the most brilliant people with post-docs
and Ph.D.s and master's degrees. They are going to want to come
to NASA for the vision, but there will be no vision with the
gyrations that we see in the budget.
Now, I understand no one is to blame, but this is a very
core issue. I am very worried about it.
reinventing nasa
Mr. Cramer. Mr. Goldin, you have had your work cut out for
you during the faster, better, cheaper days of reinventing
NASA, and faster, better, cheaper occasionally scares me
because it sounds like we may have to sacrifice something in
reinventing NASA. But I want to tell you, on behalf of the
Marshall Space Flight Center, Joe Rothenberg has been a breath
of fresh air. As the field centers have tried to redefine their
roles, their missions during this faster, better, cheaper era,
it has been very difficult for us to understand who is
responsible for what. And I think we have come a long, long way
with regard to those issues.
Do you anticipate any further redefinition of roles and
missions for any of the space centers?
Mr. Goldin. First let me say that sometimes you got to do
what you got to do. I don't like to be the bad guy. But the
American public went to the polls in 1992 and 1994 and 1996 and
said they want Government that does more and costs less. And we
had to do some very difficult things. I didn't want to do it,
but I put my hand on the Bible in the Oval Office and committed
that I would do it. I didn't take this job to win a popularity
contest.
Our NASA budget has come down over 7 years while defense
and other domestic spending has gone up. I am proud of that.
Now, we have pushed the limits, and we have found--we said we
would monitor as we came down, and when we came to a barrier,
we would stop and fix it. But if we didn't push the limits and
if people weren't in their areas of discomfort, we would have
been stuck with the old ways. So, in that sense, I can't
apologize and I will not.
Now, I feel bad that people felt a level of stress and
discomfort. But that is the way the world is.
Saying that, I believe we are at the right level now, and,
in fact, we are fixing it a bit. But, still, we are down 6,600
people out of 25,000. We are going to staff back, but certainly
not to where we were. We are at a level of stability. I have
asked for this stability and, in fact, this modest increase
over the next few years. That is what is essential to maintain
it. We intend to make no significant role changes if we could
maintain the budget that the President has proposed.
Mr. Cramer. In the limited amount of time that I have left,
I would like you to talk about propulsion research
infrastructure. Did you have something else you wanted to add?
Mr. Goldin. Yes, there was something else. There is one
issue that Malcolm just pointed out to me.
The Glenn Research Center has been hit hard by the change
in direction in our aviation program, in our aircraft program,
and we will be working with the director of the Glenn Center on
their role and mission. Art Stephenson, the Director of NASA
Marshall, will be working with Joe Rothenberg and Sam Venneri
to assure that the core competencies that are at Marshall and
Glenn are maintained and that they work together as a unit, not
as two feuding warlords. That has been very, very stressful,
and we intend to assure that that does not go on. So that is
the one exception.
Mr. Cramer. I am very familiar with that issue and other
issues about the feuds that have occurred between the centers.
Mr. Goldin. They are good people.
propulsion research
Mr. Cramer. And we also thank you for Art Stephenson. He
has done a terrific job there.
Mr. Chairman, am I out of time? I have one additional
question about propulsion research infrastructure, could you
comment about where we are there?
Mr. Goldin. We have to take a good, hard look at the
necessary infrastructure as part of this very broad, integrated
space propulsion technology program. We have found where we put
in a center of excellence, and instead of distributing a
capability across many, many centers that is mediocre, if we
make the investment and put in a world-class center, we have
the contractors and the Government agencies coming to that
place. I believe we are going to have to take some significant
steps in this infrastructure, and we are working with Art
Stephenson and Joe Rothenberg and Sam Venneri and the other
center directors and the Department of Defense to make sure
that we have the right infrastructure in place, because without
that infrastructure we will never achieve the vision.
Mr. Cramer. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Walsh. Thank you, Bud.
Mr. Frelinghuysen.
astronaut team
Mr. Frelinghuysen. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Goldin, good morning, and thank you for the work you
do. First of all, let me thank you for arranging the visit of
astronaut Rick Husband to my congressional district. His visit
generated a lot of excitement among students of all ages. I
know it would be unforgivable to suggest we would endorse human
cloning, but I would like to see----
Mr. Goldin. Please don't.
Mr. Frelinghuysen. I won't. [Laughter.]
Mr. Frelinghuysen. And I wouldn't have you do that, but the
men and women you have in your astronaut team, if he is any
indication, are absolutely superb. They are wonderful
ambassadors, and they really tell a story in a very personal
way. It would be nice to see them spread out across the Nation
doing that type of work, but obviously, their primary
obligation is to you and your administration. But on behalf of
my constituents, thank you for that visit.
space shuttle independent assessment team
I do have some specific questions. Most particularly, I
know that Mr. Rothenberg is behind you. You said in your
comments here, in September 1999, Mr. Rothenberg, your
Associate Administrator for Space Flight, charted a Space
Shuttle Independent Assessment Team. What specifically spurred
the charter of this team?
Mr. Goldin. There are a couple of issues----
Mr. Frelinghuysen. I would appreciate, as you can, brevity
because I have a number of areas I would like to go to.
Mr. Goldin. The anomalies on STS-93. We had a short that
caused what could have been a potentially serious problem, and
we had some injector pins come out of the rocket engine and hit
the side wall of the nozzle. Those two things were enough to
say we have some problems, let's find out if it is any deeper
than what we just saw.
Mr. Frelinghuysen. When you say independent as part of the
title of the team, I assume most of your reviews are
independent in the sense that you want absolutely to have the
facts, because this obviously involves major investments in
human life.
Mr. Goldin. You bet. And, in fact, if you read the report,
if that report doesn't look independent to you, nothing does.
It was very tough, very hard-hitting, and to be quite candid,
some of our people were really----
Mr. Frelinghuysen. I commend you for the report. I am an
inveterate clipper, and I have clipped a lot of NASA articles
over the years, That obviously was one that a lot of my
constituents read and I think will be interested in seeing how
you are going to react to those recommendations.
Just for the record, your workforce has dropped from, I
think, 25,000 to 17,500 in the last 6 years. Is that correct?
Mr. Goldin. I think it has dropped to about 18,000 and a
few hundred. We were going to go to 17,500, but after we took a
look at the recommendations the Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel
made, this Shuttle Independent Assessment Team, the core
capabilities that Joe Rothenberg and the other enterprise heads
did, we decided to hold our staffing at the 1999 levels and not
come down that curve and, in fact, go out and hire about 2,000
people. So our staff is going to end up at something like about
18,500 or 18,600.
Mr. Frelinghuysen. Is that what you consider the ideal
workforce, or are you planning to look for increases?
Mr. Goldin. We think that that is the right level at this
point in time. We are going to monitor it. But when we hire
people--I want to make an additional point. Traditionally, in
Government, you go out and hire long-term civil servants. We
want to be a little bit more creative because this is a new
economy. We are going to look for term employees, people who
get out of college with a post-doctoral degree and are expert
in their field, and we will look to them to come to NASA for 2
or 3 years as a term assignment, learn from us, we learn from
them, they bring new skills, and then hire a new set of people.
I think this will be a new trend in Government, and we will
be more in line with how the high-tech industry works. People
no longer come to jobs for 30 and 40 years. Now, clearly----
institutional memory
Mr. Frelinghuysen. Though that is a strategy that you may
have to implement because people won't stay longer because of
salaries, better salaries in the private sector. What about the
issue of institutional memory? I mean, that is one of the
things that we recognize as pretty important.
Mr. Goldin. We are hiring a balance between long-term
permanent civil servants and term employees. And I have asked
our head of Human Relations to work with our enterprise heads
to get the right mix of those two groups of people.
Clearly, you need corporate memory, but the point I was
making is we are not going to go 100 percent long-term civil
servants. We want to get the right mix.
hiring versus investments
Mr. Frelinghuysen. With the new money, what would you say
would be the proportion between the hiring of new personnel and
additional expenditures on new technology, some of which you
have described in your opening comments? What would be the
split of the money? The new money, how would you spend it
between hiring versus investments in new platforms and
technology?
Mr. Goldin. The hiring will be measured in terms of a few
hundred million dollars, and the investment in new platforms
will be measured in billions.
american money for weapons programs
Mr. Frelinghuysen. That is fair enough.
Changing the subject briefly, you are aware that yesterday
the President signed a bill which would stop putting American
money into the International Space Station if Russian firms are
found to have helped Iran's weapons programs, weapons of mass
destruction. From what I can gather from today's paper--and
this is perhaps a fairly good summary, and I quote from Fort
Worth: ``The legislation bars extraordinary payments to
Russia's space agency for the Space Station unless the United
States confirms that Russia has not transferred missile
technology or nuclear, chemical, or biological weapons to Iran
during the previous year. The Clinton administration had
proposed paying $650 million beyond the original amount pledged
for Russia's space station.''
Do you have a reaction to that legislation? And does it do
anything to change your relationship with our Russian partners?
Mr. Goldin. First let me say, as an American, I obey the
law of the land, and we at NASA will obey the law of the land.
Secondly, I would like to say that legislation came into
being because the Space Station was the lever for that
legislation, as compared to anything else going on with Russia,
because there were errors in the press about the $650 million.
It never existed, and somehow it made it into the press. Our
intention was to invest no more than $100 million with Russia.
The activities the United States has with Russia are
measured in billions. This is $100 million that we were talking
about, and at the present time, all we are talking about is $35
million.
Saying that, clearly--and the third thing I would like to
say is Russia is a valued partner in the International Space
Station. We have clearly indicated to the RussianSpace Agency
that adherence to international standards relative to nonproliferation
of weapons is essential. They have worked very hard on this issue. I am
not in the national security community, but we certainly do talk to
them and track it.
I will say that the Russians were very stunned when that
came out, especially the head of the Russian Space Agency, who,
from my knowledge, has worked very hard to prevent
proliferation. He is taking this very, very hard. He is taking
it as a statement about his agency, and it has caused some
significant stress between our people and their people.
We will continue to work with them. We will continue to
live within the letter of the law. We will not violate the law.
But we have just increased the degree of difficulty of building
this International Space Station.
Mr. Frelinghuysen. I am one who feels that we absolutely
should be working with Russia as partners. We need to know what
they are doing. We need to gain their confidence. But at times,
there is not a lot of transparency in some of our other
relationships with Russia. But you seem to have set up a pretty
good relationship with your Russian counterpart.
de-orbiting of the mir
In the time I have left, last year we had quite a lot of
discussion about the de-orbiting of the Mir. You testified--and
I made some pretty good notes here--and I quote: ``We believe
it will come down in August'', quote-unquote. Now Russia may be
diverting equipment intended for the Space Station, some
suggest, to maintain the Mir. Do you think that Russia can both
afford keeping up the Mir and its commitment to the
International Space Station?
Mr. Goldin. First, let me say that Russia is a sovereign
nation and they have to make their own decisions about their
own resources. But as a sovereign nation, they have to meet
international commitments that they have signed up to. If they
choose to keep the Mir up, that is their decision. But it is
our position that they have to fund the International Space
Station as a priority. I made it very clear that----
Mr. Frelinghuysen. Well, are they meeting their timetable
and their obligations? I mean you were somewhat telling the
Committee last year that this thing was coming down. It seems
sort of like the Energizer Bunny, it never stops, it just keeps
going. But from our standpoint----
Mr. Goldin. I was shocked that they decided to keep it up.
Right now, they appear to have the resources in this year to do
both tasks. We sent a team over to Russia and they just
reported out to me last night that the Russians have adequate
Progress vehicles, Soyuz vehicles, to carry through this year
and they have adequate resources to get the service module
launched.
So, for the time being, we believe it is okay. I am not so
sanguine about 2001 and will continue to work with them on this
issue.
Mr. Frelinghuysen. So, you wouldn't subscribe to the notion
that somehow as a country we are bailing them out of their
obligations?
Mr. Goldin. I do not believe that we are bailing the
Russians out.
service module
Mr. Frelinghuysen. Is NASA requesting $35 million to give
Russia for equipment that would allow the American-built backup
service module to dock with the Space Station's main control
module?
And, is it the cheapest and fastest way to do it?
Mr. Goldin. We are building what is called an interim
control module which will keep the Space Station up in the
event that the service module is lost on launch. We are also
building a propulsion module that will make the Space Station
even more robust over the years. We need to have certain
equipment to hook up to Russian elements already up there. For
us to do it ourselves would be almost impossible and cost a
huge amount of money. And $14 million is a very modest price to
pay to get this equipment. We believe it is essential to the
safety of the Station.
payments to russia
Mr. Frelinghuysen. Thank you.
And, for the record, Mr. Chairman, could we get a copy of
that audit report that the Administrator offered to give us
relative to our payments ascertaining whether or not they have
gone for the proper purposes? If we could just get that for the
record?
Mr. Goldin. Mr. Chairman, could I just add one thought
here?
Mr. Walsh. Certainly.
Mr. Goldin. Mr. Frelinghuysen, I just want to give you a
sense to how open the Russians are with us. When they had the
Proton failure they invited us into their laboratories and
showed us things we would never show them about our rockets.
They wanted to make sure that we knew every, single thing about
that rocket. We have audited them on numerous occasions. We
even audited--there was a story in the paper about Biopreparat
and the possibility that NASA funds were diverted to do
chemical and germ warfare. I will also submit that report for
the record, too.
Mr. Frelinghuysen. Well, the reason I asked you, I sit on
the Energy and Water Committee and the DOE does quite a lot of
work in terms of tracking, you know, fissile material. And we
visited some of these closed cities or formerly closed cities--
they might as well be closed, because they still are closed in
some respects--and there is not a lot of transparency in terms
of our working relationship with that Federal agency. There
appears to be a lot more in yourcase.
Mr. Goldin. Yes. There is a lot more transparency so you
can understand the frustration on the Russian side. But saying
that, we will support the law of the land of the United States
of America.
Mr. Frelinghuysen. Thank you very much.
Mr. Walsh. So, you will provide that audit to the
Committee?
Mr. Goldin. Absolutely. We will provide both audit reports.
Mr. Walsh. Thank you.
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personnel at nasa
Mr. Walsh. Mr. Goode?
Mr. Goode. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Goldin, you said, I believe, previously, that your
number of employees at NASA were 25,000 and you cut back 6,000,
or so, you have got about 19,000; is that ball park?
Mr. Goldin. We will go out 2001 with 18,700.
Mr. Goode. Now, out of your budget, what percentage or how
much is your personnel costs? Just ball park?
Mr. Goldin. About $1.4 billion.
Mr. Goode. And then how much is direct expenditures by NASA
that is not contracted out?
Mr. Goldin. I think 90 percent of our budget is contracted
out. We do a very large percentage of our budget, it is very
high relative to other agencies.
rocket suppliers
Mr. Goode. And the Chairman asked you--or you were
commenting on distinguishing between those firms that you deal
with that have large rocket capacity and, I think, he referred
to them as 300-pound gorillas. How many firms like that are
there?
Mr. Goldin. Two.
Mr. Goode. Two. All right. And then you have got nine small
ones that you are working with to try to get them in the ball
game with the other two; is that correct?
Mr. Goldin. It is going to be a tough job but we are
absolutely committed to doing that and I think it will
strengthen the two big rocket suppliers. There is--you know,
capitalism teaches you that competition is good. And with
additional competition I believe these big companies will
perform better.
Mr. Goode. Let me ask you this: Who all do the big two,
what nations do they sell to besides us or do they just sell to
us?
Mr. Goldin. No. They sell rockets in Europe, they sell
rockets in Asia.
Mr. Goode. To China?
Mr. Goldin. I don't know. I don't know where they are at
this point in time in selling rockets to China.
I do know that they had sold them in the past and given the
latest set of issues, I don't know what the sales of rockets to
China are at this point in time.
Mr. Goode. If you ramp up these other nine, do you think in
the world of capitalism and free markets that they will be
selling to China?
Mr. Goldin. I am not touching that with a 10-foot pole.
[Laughter.]
Mr. Goode. Well, let me ask you, do you think that it is a
good idea that we get more firms up to the 300-pound gorilla
level so that other nations, besides China, maybe Iran would
want to buy something from them, some rockets and launch
vehicles?
Mr. Goldin. I think that these questions need to be asked
of the foreign policy community. We do R&D and we want to make
America as strong as possible. We want to support the
Department of Defense and their needs, we want to support the
commercial launch industry and their needs, and we want to
support our scientific needs. How the licensing becomes
established on selling to nations that are not friendly to the
United States is something that we at NASA cannot and should
not deal with.
Mr. Goode. Well, I am not saying that you should but if you
ramp up nine more companies to get into the ball game--and that
is certainly good as long as they are dealing and playing with
us and helping us, but I don't know if that is a good idea if
they are going to be in the free market buying and selling to
some of the other nations of the world.
Mr. Goldin. Let me answer it this way. A few hundred years
ago there were the Luddites that did not want progress to
proceed in industry and manufacturing. And they wanted to stop
the forward motion of technology. If we, in America, say we are
afraid of the possibilities of these companies lobbying to sell
to non-friendly nations, we are going to put America in a very
bad place with national defense, we are going to put them in a
bad place with commerce, with a broad range of very good
countries and corporations and we will slow down our leadership
in space.
I am a strong proponent for moving forward with technology
and I believe if you talk to my associates in the defense
community they will strongly support it. We will give up the
worldwide leadership that we have in projection of power and
the projection of economic strength and that is why I say we
got to move forward with technology and the national security
community has to make those selective decisions about where it
is appropriate to sell and not to sell.
But let me point out that I just read in the newspaper that
the Israelis are selling 1-meter reconnaissance technology to
South Korea. And if we, as a nation, say, we are going to walk
off the playing field and hold everything tight, technologies
are going to go from other countries that we have no control
over. When America sells and we have some control, we can
project our influence. So, just because we shut the faucet off
in America, that won't stop the progression of technology in
other countries and as I say, this is an issue that we, in
America, have to think about, we can't walk away from.
Mr. Goode. Well, I agree with you. I think technology will
follow the money: don't you agree?
Mr. Goldin. I believe that we have a nation of laws,we have
a nation that is a democracy and this nation will always do the right
thing. I believe in the vision of America. I am not afraid of the
future.
Mr. Goode. Thanks for your reply.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Walsh. Thank you.
Mrs. Northup.
commercial launch services
Mrs. Northup. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Other people have touched on some of this, but you hear all
the time about what the private sector initiatives are and I
just wondered if you could give me some idea of, you know,
there are spins that say that the private sector is going to
pass up what NASA is doing, that the abilities to get
satellites up and operating. And you do get the feeling that
there are far more of these launches than many of us
understand. And I just wondered if you could give me some idea
about the level of activity, both in the private sector, how
much you all collaborate--and I don't mean collaborate by
contracting, you all contracting for somebody to build your
engine--but, for example, if XYZ corporation wants to get a
satellite up in the air, do you all, do they come to you, do
they go to anybody else?
Mr. Goldin. Absolutely not. NASA is not in the business of
commercial launch services. In fact, for our own launches, with
the exception of the Shuttle, we buy them on the commercial
market place. We buy services. NASA develops technologies for
launch vehicles that we transfer to the private sector. We are
not in the commercial launch business.
It is our policy, if we could buy it commercially, if we
could help commercial companies, we are not in the business of
building rockets. One of the very high levels of stress--and I
inferred it when I talked to Mr. Cramer--is that we are now in
the process of transferring the Shuttle to a private sector
company. There are many who believe--there are some who believe
that only the U.S. Government can make the Shuttle safe. I
don't proscribe to that. Now, we need to in a very focused
manner, step-by-step, hand over the Shuttle to a private
company. But NASA should not be in the business of operating
normal vehicles that just take cargo and people up and down to
space. We ought to be on the cutting edge of technology.
You have to understand that there is a great level of
anxiety. We need to make the Shuttle safe. But it will be the
worst thing for our country to say only the Federal Government
and only Federal employees are committed to safety.
Mrs. Northup. Oh, I would never say that.
Mr. Goldin. Well, there are people who do say that and some
of my own subordinates say that.
Mrs. Northup. People think that only public employees can
teach, only public employees can do lots of things. I am really
on the other side of that argument.
Mr. Goldin. But our employees are terrific but they need to
do cutting edge research.
cutting edge research
Mrs. Northup. Well, let me ask you, are there companies
that are as much or more on the cutting edge of research as
NASA is? In other words, would there be, what is the
possibility of a private space station going up?
Mr. Goldin. Well, let me put it this way. The very minute
there is a private station, NASA is out of the business.
Mrs. Northup. But isn't that being discussed right now?
Mr. Goldin. There has been talk about it for 20 years.
Mrs. Northup. But nobody that is actually putting
together--I thought there was somebody that was actually
putting together an effort to do that.
Mr. Goldin. Well, there are some American investors that
are trying to convert Mir into a private space station.
Mrs. Northup. I see.
Mr. Goldin. But, again, let me make our policy very, very
clear. NASA wants to go to Mars. We want to go to asteroids. We
want to go to comets. We want to go to planets and moons of
planets. And the very minute the private sector is ready to
take over low-earth orbit, taking people up and down to low-
earth orbit, building space stations in low-earth orbit and
they are able to demonstrate they could do it responsibly and
safely, NASA is out of it.
Mrs. Northup. Okay.
Mr. Goldin. And a lot of people start a business by first
attacking NASA and telling everyone how terrible we are and how
we are dominating. My position is that we have outstanding
employees that want to go to Mars, they don't want to go to
low-earth orbit. Our employees are outstanding. They want to
make sure the hand-over from the public sector to the private
sector is safe and it is taking a little bit longer because the
private sector companies don't have the right skills. But we
trust them, we will take a little extra time, we will have a
few more Government employees doing the quality inspections and
all the other things, but it is our goal that within a decade
we will have private sector companies taking cargo routinely up
and down to the Space Station and hopefully they will be able
to start taking people up and down.
regulation of space flight
Mrs. Northup. Is there any regulation of that or should
there be? Any, in terms of safety,--I mean, you know, we don't
let planes take off and crash in the air. I am not talking to
limit them, I am talking about to protect them, to enhance the
system or is it--is space so big that we don't need to worry
about two people running into each other?
And that is not the only thing. But----
Mr. Goldin. The Department of Transportation has the
national responsibility for certification of vehicles, to take
people and cargo to space and as time marches on--in fact, it
is the FAA--I anticipate that just as we have the FAA
overseeing aircraft flight, they will oversee the space flight
and that is appropriate. NASA should not do it.
Mrs. Northup. Okay.
Mr. Goldin. But, again, I want to be sure you understand
the intent of my question. I think that the NASA employees
conscientiously want to hand over the Shuttle to a private
sector company but they gave us feedback that we were going a
little too fast and we didn't have the right staff level to
oversee that transition. They want to work on the cutting edge.
Mrs. Northup. I am not--I really wasn't questioning at all
what NASA was doing to help or hurt it, I just wondered sort of
what the level of competence is, in comparison, and how fast we
might see privatization?
Mr. Goldin. Well, I will give you another statistic. NASA
is one of the smartest buyers of rockets in the world. Over the
last 10 years, our record of success is four times better than
the commercial purchases of rockets. So, as abuyer, we are such
a smart buyer, we are able to help commercial companies do a better
job.
Mrs. Northup. Okay.
applications of technologies
Mr. Walsh. Thank you.
We will begin a second round. I would like to begin,
Administrator Goldin, with some thoughts on the applications of
some of the technologies that NASA has developed, specifically
as they relate to municipal governments. I was a local
government official, city council president, and I worked very
closely, as most of us do, with towns, villages, State and
local governments, and city governments. I am interested in
leveraging NASA's assets, things that the taxpayers have
already paid for, to help decision makers in State and local
governments.
There is a lot of discussion about Smart Growth and urban
sprawl these days, land use, forest fires, weather forecasting,
flood mapping, other natural disasters. What does NASA have or
does NASA have a fully developed and proposed State and local
applications program?
Mr. Goldin. First, let me say I salute your focus on this
issue. You know, Mr. Knollenberg asked me about what we are
doing in earth sciences as it applies to climate prediction,
weather prediction and things important to the population of
the planet as a whole. But when the history books are written,
I think one of the biggest impacts NASA will have on the
quality of life is our ability to take this very high-tech,
very advanced technology that is coming down from space in
unbelievable quantities of data, process that data and make it
available to cities, counties, States and the private sector.
I don't think we are as aggressive as we could and should
be in this area. We have a limited program right now and I
think the 2001 budget has about $7 million for this
collaboration. But when you take a look at 50 States in the
nation, take a look at the number of cities we have, I don't
think that this budget adequately gets at what needs to be
done. Now, we have run some pilot programs in Arizona, we have
run some pilot programs in Montana, we have run a pilot program
in Syracuse, the results are breathtaking.
Now, the question there is how do we encourage this public/
private partnership? If we just have total NASA funding, 100
percent earmarked, I don't think it will get there. But, if we
have a robust program where we ask for partnership, where we
put in some funds, and there is some matching funds, because
there are also has to be a value. If we are going to bring our
space technology, we would like to see that people will make an
investment to impact the constituents in their area.
So, if there is matching funds and competition I think a
robust program in this area would be just one of the greatest
things that this agency could do and we would love to work with
this Committee and the administration to make that happen.
other government and private sector applications
Mr. Walsh. I mentioned a number of applications. What other
applications might we envision for use by the public sector?
Mr. Goldin. Just something as simple as, in the Southwest,
how do you calculate where you should put storm drains? And how
much should you spend on storm drains? In Scottsdale, Arizona,
they are saving millions of dollars so that they could design
it just right for, you know, the worst case flood conditions.
We are working with grape growers in Northern California to
improve the quality of their grapes and to get much more
efficiency out of it.
We are working with cotton farmers in Mississippi to
increase the productivity of those farms by 25 percent and cut
their costs by 10 to 15 percent. The price of commodities is
dropping worldwide and some countries are building up surpluses
to control the prices and the U.S. cotton farmers are really
getting hit bad. And if they are going to stay competitive they
need to get their operating costs down and their productivity
up.
Mr. Walsh. So, you are discerning crop infestation, is that
it, or moisture content?
Mr. Goldin. Oh, a broad range of things. When do you lay
down fertilizer? When do you lay down nutrients? When do you
lay down pest control? When do you water? When do you leave it
dry? There is a broad range of things that are very important
to the operation. How do you put tractors and this equipment
through a field without damaging crops? You have to sometimes
look down 10 to 18 inches. How do you get low-cost sensors that
literally cost dollars that could send a signal up to space and
then bring it right back down to the ground and integrate that
processing?
These are the kinds of cutting edge technologies we use.
So, when we go to Mars, we develop some of these sensors, we
bring it back and we install it into the fields.
Mr. Walsh. One of the best ways to resolve the argument
that we hear right in this Subcommittee, where we have to
trade-off expenditures on basic human needs like housing and
medical care against raw basic science, is to show these
applications and their benefit to humanity and to the
structures that govern humanity. Especially at the closest
level to the people, it is easier to win those arguments in the
debate.
Mr. Goldin. Well, I could tell you other things we are
doing, we are tracking lyme disease.
Mr. Walsh. Is that right?
Mr. Goldin. We are tracking malaria. Yes. Vector-borne
diseases are something we are working on. We are working with
the National Institutes of Health and the National Science
Foundation. From the height of space you could begin to
fingerprint disease in places where malaria and the mosquitos
that spread malaria might breed. So, we are now looking at
those kinds of applications, too, that touch everybody.
Mr. Walsh. This Subcommittee looks forward to working with
you on those applications. I think there is tremendous
opportunity for better governance and for a number of broad
improvements we can make globally.
living with a star
In the area of space science, NASA is about to start a new
research initiative called, Living With a Star. I think that
Mr. Knollenberg asked a little bit about that. Could you
explain the program and the reason NASA is undertaking the
initiative?
Mr. Goldin. Yes. I begun to get at it but the sun is a very
magnetically active star that has variability. So, there is a
known cycle in sun spots, solar activity, that is about 11
years. But every so often we have something called coronal mass
ejections, just billions of tons of material gets thrown off
from the sun and it travels through space and then it hits the
earth and creates incredible, incredible damage. We need to
understand it. We need to be able topredict it.
We intend to put a series of space craft up over this next
solar cycle, starting in 2006 to 2016, that will be the most
comprehensive measurements ever of our own sun. And right now
we have been looking at the sun from earth but we are going to
put sentinels up that will look at the top of the sun, the
bottom of the sun, go behind the sun. We will have sentinels
with solar sails that will be tacking above the North and South
Pole of the earth. This is really way out technology. We will
integrate all this information----
Mr. Walsh. Tacking, similar to sailboats?
Mr. Goldin. It is as though it was a sailboat, right. It is
a sail and it will be able to stay literally perched above the
North and South Poles where there is a lot of interaction
between the sun and the earth's magnetosphere. So, as we go
over a full solar cycle, being able to look at the sun, the sun
rotates, by understanding what happens on the back side of the
sun we hope to extend it from hours to days to weeks in terms
of the prediction to understand how the sun works and interacts
with our planet.
And as I told Mr. Knollenberg, a 10th percent change in
solar energy has a significant impact on our climate. And
another goal of NASA is to be able to predict climate globally,
regionally, and locally, initially to months, to years, and
then to decades. This data is absolutely essential for the kind
of planning that has to go on in a global economy and to make
decisions that could have economic impact.
Getting back to cutting edge R&D, we intend to provide the
data so policy makers could decide are the human species
forcing changes in climate and it will be done on an open peer
review basis. This is a very crucial aspect.
And, finally, we are going to send astronauts to Mars. One
of the most serious threats that those astronauts have is the
incredible radiation damage that could occur while they are in
space. An hour or two prediction is not good enough. We need
days to weeks and then we could protect those astronauts.
Mr. Walsh. This study of the sun will require collaboration
from NSF, DoD, FAA, and NOAA. What resources are they willing
to bring to this program?
Mr. Goldin. We have been having meetings with them. We
don't intend to have them put money into build a space craft
but we want them to bring their skills, for example, NOAA has a
tremendous capacity in taking space craft data and reducing it
into models that could tell us how the weather is being
affected and the climate is being affected.
We are working with the Department of Defense because they
need early sentinel warning to protect their assets. So, we are
going to work with each of these areas so they will be able to
take advantage of what we are doing and broader apply it so
that the taxpayer wins. So, we don't have duplication of
resources. So, we don't have each agency putting up space craft
but we will all do what we do best and not overlap in
capability.
And I have to say, Dr. Caldwell, the head of NSF, has been
really aggressive in working with us, the DOE, the Department
of Defense, they are very serious about making this a team
America effort.
research and engineering processes
Mr. Walsh. On another topic regarding engineering. I read
your article that you wrote in the November 1999 Mechanical
Engineering Magazine. It was a fascinating. You are at your
best when you are looking out into the future. You talk about
significant changes in the way engineering systems are
designed, produced and operated. Could you explain what major
changes you envision in research and engineering processes? You
talked a little bit about that earlier with the collaboration
with other countries, and why NASA is engaged in trying to
change the whole engineering culture?
Mr. Goldin. There is a new technology wave that is sweeping
across the future. Those that ride the wave are going to make
it and those that don't ride the wave will be condemned to the
past. There are unbelievable advancements in three technical
areas. I call it the triangle for success: Information
technology, nano-technology and biotechnology. These are the
three areas that are going to change our world in the next
decade. Today, in the year 2000, government agencies, private
corporations, commit 90 percent of their resources to a job
when they have 10 percent design knowledge. This is what leads
to cost-growth problems overrun. This is the kind of thing that
needs the incredible oversight that we have at NASA.
With advanced thinking software, actually thinking software
we could design systems that are tolerant to error. We even use
some of this software to fly planes and simulated the loss of
aerodynamic control surfaces and the plane was able to recover.
Think of the implications in the design process.
We need computers that operate much faster and we need
computers that take much lower power levels. Virtual reality is
unacceptable as it is today because you need all these cyber
tools and at very best you could get a reasonable three-
dimensional representation in cyberspace. What we want is total
immersion, virtual presence in sight, in sound, and in tactile
feel.
Because when you think of simulators, think about a
simulator where we could train astronauts instead of putting
them in a pool, if they could go in three-dimensional space and
simulate how they build that space station, the training will
be realistic. Right now, there is no force feed back. We hope
to be able to do it without cyber-goggles, and we help to put
people in the same environment geographically distributed
seeing the same things. We want to be able to have common data
bases.
Today one of the problems we have with the Shuttle is that
we have multiple data bases and the independent assessment team
criticized us for that. Using these modern tools we could have
a common data base that constantly strobes through to look for
problems and I will give you an example.
We took a series of landings at an airport and we plotted
200 different parameters for all the planes landing and we then
plotted out the variation in these parameters. And we looked
for those that were outside the normal operations and we used
intelligent tools to find out what was wrong and from that you
could predict incipient failure before it happens. You put that
into the design tool base.
So, now you have total immersion, geographically
distributed, common tools, where you could work in cyberspace
with realism and you could have a capability to design and
operate a system before you cut one piece of hardware.
Now, you have 90 percent design knowledge when you commit
to a program instead of 10 percent and all of a sudden you will
then start shrinking the time and the cost and youget much
better reliability. If we were to break away from the past, these tools
are absolutely essential and it will revolutionize education which was
the second article that Sam Venneri and I wrote about. Think about a
teacher working with a class in cyberspace and the student is working
on a design problem. The teacher could be in cyberspace and the student
doesn't even know it and throw in all sorts of problems as they are
going along with the design, because this is life.
Mr. Walsh. As you create that culture in NASA, or as that
culture evolves in terms of engineering and plan design and
quasi-fail-safe programs, you also talked about getting
students coming in, Ph.D.s, for two or three years at a time.
Will they be ready to enter that culture coming from existing
universities and engineering schools?
Mr. Goldin. The engineering schools are nowhere near where
they should be. And we are beginning a very active
collaboration along those lines. We just restructured NASA.
I now have a senior advisor, General Sam Armstrong, whose
main purpose for the next year is to connect up with the
universities in science and technologies and engage. In the
1960s, NASA was a leader in shaping directions the universities
went in the high-tech field and because of cost pressures I
think we walked away from one of our prime responsibilities,
the training of the next generation. We will be condemned to
the past if we don't look into the future so we intend to
actively engage.
Sam Venneri has just been appointed the head of the
Aerospace Enterprise. He and Sam Armstrong will be working to
encourage universities to come back, not just to scientists,
but the technical universities to work with us to develop these
tools, refine these tools, train the people to use them so when
they go out into the private sector it will strengthen
everything we do in this country and it is a very high
development priority.
And this is why NASA is going to get into nano-technology,
biotechnology, and information technology and just yesterday I
met two of our recent acquisitions out at NASA AMES. We are
hiring people for on the order of $100,000 when they could go
out and make a half million to a million dollars because we are
working on this. This is what makes NASA different than any
place in the world.
We are not working on technology that is two years out, we
are working on technology that is 20 years out and with that we
are going to make a huge difference.
Mr. Walsh. Your ability to provide that environment for
these smart young people to come to probably is the best perk
that you could offer as opposed to the equity positions that
they could gain in some of these companies.
Mr. Goldin. If you give us the stability and funding.
Mr. Walsh. I hear you.
Mr. Goldin. And by the way I am not saying that to be
funny. I think that unless we are credible with these young
people, they don't play games, you know, the budgets go up and
down. They are either going to come and be committed to us or
they are going to go make money.
Mr. Walsh. Well, I am sure you will make them aware that
this is not rocket science on this Subcommittee. It is a trade-
off, it is a constant and very much living debate about values
of government services that we don't always control. It is not
as scientific as what you do but we will do our best to make
sure you can meet those commitments and attract those young
people that you need and we believe you need to be successful.
Mr. Mollohan.
mars programs
Mr. Mollohan. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Goldin, I would like to now touch on the state of the
Mars Program, if I might. As we all know, there have been two
major disappointments over the past year, the losses of the
Mars Climate Orbiter and the Mars Polar Lander. As for the
Climate Orbiter, it appears from the reports that failure in
this case was caused in large part by human error and failures
in software and craft validation.
We still await the final report of the Mars Independent
Assessment Team, chaired by Thomas Young, on the failure of the
Polar Lander. Although this report is not due to be released
until the end of this month, it is my understanding that
software verification and validation will be named as a key
failure in this mission. I know in response to these reports,
NASA has undertaken a major review of the Mars Program. Would
you please share with the Committee the current review
processes you are undergoing with respect to the Mars Program?
Mr. Goldin. Well, we have three basic studies on the Mars
Program. One led by Tony Spear, and that has been underway for
a good portion of a year, to take a look at what we have done
right and what we have done wrong across the agency in faster,
better, cheaper programs. And that report is now out.
Art Stephenson did a report on the Mars Climate Orbiter
failure and we then asked him to take a look in the broader
sense, based upon what you learned from that failure and other
failures we have, how could NASA change the way that it does
business to be much more effective? And that report is now out.
And then we await the Young Panel Report.
Based on recommendations from Art Stephenson and Tony Spear
I have asked the chief engineer, Brian Keegan, to integrate the
findings from all these reports, including the Shuttle Report
and the Report that is going to come out on the X-33 to see how
NASA ought to change its operating procedures, to work
collaboratively with all the center directors, associate
administrators and chief engineers at each of our centers, and
by mid-summer come out with the recommendations he makes,
consolidated and action plans to execute them. That is the
process we intend to go through.
Mr. Mollohan. It sounds like this is growing into a overall
review of processes NASA-wide, not only of the Mars Program.
Mr. Goldin. That is correct. As I indicated, we don't focus
on our successes which are plentiful, we magnify our failures
and we learn. We deal with the 5 percent where we have problems
because when you do that you significantly improve the process.
faster, better, cheaper
Mr. Mollohan. And that is the spirit of my question, not to
dwell on the failures.
There has been a great deal of speculation that the two
Mars failures may have been casualties of ``Faster, Better,
Cheaper,'' which you initiated in early 1990. I don't want to
imply that that approach has in any way been a failure. We all
have seen the great successes in the NASA space program in
recent years, and a lot of it is due to that approach and the
energy which you have put behind it.
However, the Mars malfunctions do seem to raise the
question of whether the Faster, Better, Cheaper approach
isalways the best method, or that perhaps it has been given too much
emphasis in any particular undertaking. And I know you asked Tony Spear
that question and you alluded to the fact that his report is back.
I received a copy of it a couple of days ago. In the report
he did make the point that the second generation missions have
been too restricted by cost caps while the challenge bar
perhaps has been raised too high.
He suggested some fixes to that program. Would you care to
comment on this report and its implications for the Mars
program?
Mr. Goldin. Sure.
Mr. Mollohan. And NASA, in general.
Mr. Goldin. First I think, all three were--or two reports
that are out so far state we ought to continue it past the--but
there is one issue that I think is a dominating factor, and
that is, we began a journey almost 8 years ago, and we have
been pressing tighter and tighter and tighter and tighter. We
said we were going to monitor as we went along, and when we had
a problem, we would stop and pause and fix. I believe, although
it was not the intention, some people treated cost and schedule
as a holy cow, that you could not come back and ask for more
money. There is a tension that builds up over that.
During this time the defense industry was downsizing. There
was fear of loss of job, loss of role for different centers,
and there was not terrific communication, especially in the
second round of faster-better-cheaper in the planetary program,
Mars especially, with headquarters. So good people were
violating good common sense, and it is not complicated. So what
we are going to do is step back and make sure people understand
that when there is a problem, one or two things have to happen.
Either more resources get brought--or three things--or we
reduce the requirements only to acceptable levels. You do not
want to make the requirements so low that there is no benefit
to the cost of the mission. Or three, you say, ``Before we get
into trouble, we will cancel it.'' It is acceptable to cancel.
Now, the second part of the problem I think is due to me.
When I opened up the whole issue of faster-better-cheaper, I
did not want to be prescriptive, and I said, ``We need the
culture to develop, so I want things to be done more cost
effectively, and I would like to have faster-better-cheaper
without sacrificing safety,'' and I gave that as a guidance to
the people involved. And many of them were able to deal with
it. But when--others needed prescription. They held on to the
whole issue, you got to live within the cost and the schedule,
and then they were over constrained. But then I said, ``Failure
is acceptable'', and I did not define what failure means. And I
think some people thought failure is okay if you do not obey
basic rules. So good people did dumb things. And in a couple of
circumstances we had a lot of junior people, because we went
from a few programs a year to more than a dozen a year, and we
were bringing up a new work force and mistakes were made. So
the concept of faster-better-cheaper is absolutely sound. The
fact that we pushed the limits and had some failures is okay.
But now we have got to step back and make sure our people
understand what we expect from them, what we expect from them
on being open and candid and having communications on cost and
schedule, and I think if we could fix that one issue, the other
things will fall into place with proper training and proper
resources.
learning from failures
Mr. Mollohan. You said failure is okay. What failure was
okay, and is it still okay?
Mr. Goldin. In my mind, if there is not malice
aforethought, if there is not gross incompetence, failure is
tolerable.
Mr. Mollohan. Mission failure?
Mr. Goldin. You betcha, you betcha, because if you do not
challenge people to do tough things, that is unhealthy. If
people do tough things and then they fail, and you punish them,
there is a very clear choice that comes after that, that they
pull back and they do mediocre things, and then they come
forward and say, ``Look at my report card. I have 100 percent
success.''
Now, there is some debate about whether that is going too
far with failure, but that is where I am right now.
Mr. Mollohan. But it is only okay if there has been a
realistic assessment if the resources on task are adequate. I
do not know how you go through that, but I am sure you are not
suggesting that a project manager fit the project into some
arbitrary funding amount, and then if it cannot fit at the end
of the day its failure is okay. I do not think you are saying
that.
Mr. Goldin. No, I am not saying that. I am saying that we
did not have a system where there were enough open
communications where people felt comfortable enough saying,
``The resources do not match''----
Mr. Mollohan. ``We do not have enough here.''
Mr. Goldin [continuing]. ``This job.'' And I feel that
faster-better-cheaper is not there. That is a failing of how we
implemented it. And all the other problems, I think, to a
degree stem from that.
Mr. Mollohan. But that is the critical issue, isn't it? The
sense of people, wherever they are in the organization, feeling
comfortable about saying, ``Look, we do not have enough
resources here to have a mission success, or at least looking
forward, feel comfortable about having a missing success. We
need additional resources or we should not go forward'', which
is a legitimate decision to make. If you say, ``Well, we are
not going to put any more resources on it, then if we do not
have an acceptable chance of being successful, we cancel the
mission.'' I mean, it is almost a cultural question I think
that I am asking here. The organization has to feel free to
say, ``Within this mandate of Faster-Better-Cheaper, this is
too cheap, and we cannot guarantee mission success. Therefore,
you have a choice, put additional resources on it or cancel the
mission and do not cut off my head for saying so.''
Mr. Goldin. You bet. And they have to have a confidence
that their head will not be cut off. And this is a factor that
you cannot make go away completely. And you cannot walk away
from management responsibility because you want people to be in
that comfort zone. Life is a set of tradeoffs. It cannot be one
way or the other.
You know, when I got to NASA, there was never a limit of
how much money a program needed. The average cost growth on our
programs was 79 percent.
Mr. Mollohan. And I intended to start out my questioning by
complimenting you for instilling that attitude and culture in
NASA, and I am just exploring, I guess----
Mr. Goldin. I also have to say----
Mr. Mollohan [continuing]. The boundaries of that.
Mr. Goldin [continuing]. I probably pressed too hard on
that, and now maybe we have to pull back. So I do not blame any
of our employees. I am personally responsible and accountable.
I pushed the limits, and now we need to back off.
There is one other element that needs to enter into this.
We need to have the leadership in NASA, not just the project
managers, take responsibility for this. The center directors,
in my mind, were negligent in holding what I call program
management councils. We set a program management council. It is
the job of those program management councils to have a peer
review of projects. So if the project manager comes in and say,
``I need more money'', that project manager must stand in front
of their peers and defend that, and defend the requirements
versus capability. I think our center directors and the
administrator let our project managers down in not having that
aggressive peer review, and they were concerned, and they never
brought it forward.
Mr. Mollohan. That is a process failure I guess.
Mr. Goldin. That was a process failure, yes. But one for
which I feel bad, but I will not apologize because we had to
push and see where the limits were.
independent validation and verification facility
Mr. Mollohan. I accept that. I was looking for a particular
reference in that report, but the question I ask relates to it.
I would like to ask one more question on the Mars Program.
Before I do, I wanted to thank you for holding a quarterly
senior management council meeting at the Independent
Verification and Validation Facility in Fairmont. I appreciate
your willingness to take that step, as well as your promise to
fully integrate the IV&V facility into all NASA Centers.
In addition, the Fiscal Year 2000 VA/HUD Conference Report
includes language directing you to report by June 1st, in
conjunction with the Goddard Space Flight Center, on the status
of your integration efforts. Would you be able to give the
Committee a preview of this report?
Mr. Goldin. Well, to the first order, I think we got so
much interest in the IV&V facility, we are not able to handle
the load that is now being generated.
Mr. Mollohan. I would like to have that problem. I would
like to have Bud Cramer's problem that he laid out to you, that
he has too much--no, he did not say he has too much--but, I
could infer that.
Mr. Goldin. But the key issue here is that was a watershed
meeting, because it brought into focus two issues, IV&V,
Independent Verification & Validation, which is done at that
facility in Fairmont, West Virginia. But before you do that,
you have to do verification and validation yourself on your own
projects. And had we held that meeting two or three years ago,
I do not think we would have seen some of the failures that we
have just seen. So it brought the awareness up, and now the
organization is responding to see how they do verification and
validation themselves on their own projects, and how they use
the national resources at the center in Fairmont to do the
independent verification and validation.
Now, Fairmont will not necessarily do all the IV&V, but
they will be the clearinghouse to assure that the proper
contractors are certified to do the work, and that the work is
being done to the highest standards. So when we come out, I
think that is the broad direction that that report is going to
go in.
Mr. Mollohan. I think progress is being made here. That is
kind of a clear statement on mission, and I look forward to its
implementation realization. Is the report on schedule and can
we expect it to be rolled out on June 1st?
Mr. Goldin. I believe so, but let me put the person
responsible and accountable on the record.
Is Lee Holcomb here? Is the answer yes?
Mr. Holcomb. We will have a report for you at that time. We
are going to be reviewing it next month in the senior
management meeting.
Mr. Mollohan. I am going to ask for the record that you
respond to this question for the record. What new activities
have been initiated with the NASA Centers, and specifically
with regard to the Mars Program, with the IV&V Center. And I am
going to ask you to respond for the record.
Mr. Goldin. I will respond for the record, yes, sir.
[The information follows:]
Beginning in March 2000, NASA undertook an effort to define future
plans for the Agency's Independent Verification and Validation (IV&V)
Facility in Fairmont, West Virginia. NASA is committed to ensuring a
substantive role for the IV&V Facility in the Agency's missions.
The recently released reports concerning the Mars '98 failures have
heightened NASA's sensitivity to the Agency's increasing reliance on
software and the requirements for verification of its accuracy to
achieve mission success. The past decade has brought a four-fold
increase in the amount of software usage on NASA missions, and the next
decade is forecast to bring the same or even greater increase.
Enhancements in software development approaches and practices for
verification and validation of software performance are imperative if
NASA is to effectively meet this challenge. In this regard, the core
capability in software IV&V represented by the Fairmont Facility will
be pivotal in the Agency's thrust to ensure successful missions.
NASA has decided to realign the Fairmont Facility to the Goddard
Space Flight Center as a way of better aligning the center of gravity
of Fairmont activity with an organization better able to support it.
Furthermore, NASA's senior management team has approved a NASA Software
Initiative under the leadership of the NASA Chief Engineer as part of
NASA's Engineering Excellence process. With safety and quality being
key aspects, the initiative will include the development of guidelines
for the performance of IV&V as a mechanism for increasing the attention
of NASA program and project managers to this area. An Agencywide IV&V
policy has also been formulated, with the participation of all NASA
Centers that will require all NASA projects to define appropriate IV&V
activities as part of their development plan. The Fairmont Facility
will concur in those plans, manage the IV&V work, and perform it at the
West Virginia facility, except when performance at the development site
is required.
GSFC has completed a final draft business plan for the Fairmont
Facility. This plan outlines current work and capability at the
Facility, potential new IV&V-related work, the transition process to
GSFC management, and the approach for development of a detailed
Operational Plan. NASA is aggressively developing plans for IV&V of
flight project software to reduce risk to NASA missions. Using the
strengthened policies referenced above and specific criteria, IV&V
requirements and schedules are being developed for NASA flight
projects. JPL is also performing an internal assessment of software
verification and validation needs for its missions, including
independent assessments by the IV&V Facility. Initial agreements for
IV&V of mission software will be developed with key flight projects by
August 2000. Consistent with the schedule included in NASA's IV&V
business plan, an Operational Plan for the Facility, including
schedules and budgets, is to be completed by September 2000.
Mr. Mollohan. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Walsh. Thank you. Mrs. Meek.
Remarks of Representative Meek
Mrs. Meek. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I had to go to my other
subcommittee on Treasury Postal, but it is always a pleasure to
be here to greet Mr. Goldin and the NASA staff. I just think
Mr. Goldin is a very brilliant leader and has really shown that
in his performance as head of NASA.
And I think that there is not any other subcommittee that
will have the exposure that we have, in that we do have the
best minds in this country to come to us to present the
scientific and technological advances that have been made by
NASA, and I am pleased to be here.
I am also happy to see, Mr. Chairman, that the President
this year had the foresight to provide an increase for NASA. I
have sat on this subcommittee, I think for two years now, and I
have seen NASA's budget gradually diminished. I would not like
to see that happen, and that if we are going to keep the
advancement going in spite of some difficulties that we have
with all agencies, that this Committee will continue to react
positively to the President's increase. And if he does not
increase it, do as the Congress has done several times, the
Congress will increase it. I think it is well deserved, Mr.
Goldin, the increase that the President has recommended for
NASA.
I am very encouraged by not only your scientific advances,
but the educational programs which you have provided. I have
visited the Kennedy Center and I have see these programs
operate. I have also seen what you have done with business
incubators, which I think is a great step toward using the
kinds of expertise which NASA has developed, using it in
communities and using it for the benefit of people who need
that knowledge. I want to commend NASA for doing that, and also
particularly what you've done in minority institutions. I
really do not know how they would have achieved the scientific
advancements that they have achieved until you started funding
minority programs, and it showed that you wanted to see them
develop the scientific and technological expertise which NASA
required. And I want to commend you for that. I have seen these
programs at Florida International University, and I have seen
them work at Florida A&M University, and I have seen them work
in communities, seen groups like TRDA work throughout the state
of Florida, so I have nothing but plaudits for NASA today. I am
one of the many in this Congress--many people who do not sit on
this committee have pushed very hard for NASA. And we will
continue to do so because we see really a product in what you
do.
So I do not have too many questions, Mr. Chairman, about
the launches. I know the last time you had 8 launches the last
time I asked you a question, and then this time you have 9
launches, and that shows advancement in itself and that you are
very optimistic, and hopefully, this Committee will see for to
do it.
I think in some aspects, Mr. Chairman, that NASA has been
sort of punished for their early successes. They did so very
well, that they sort of got punished and sort of cut back in
places perhaps where they should not have. But your budget this
year looks like it is adequate enough to cover the things that
you need to cover.
biotechnology
These science initiative that I notice in NASA in
biotechnology, which is going to really, really be an advance
to all of our sciences. I would like Mr. Goldin to say a few
words about what you are doing in the area of biotechnology.
Mr. Goldin. This is a very, very exciting new field. And in
biotechnology we will be working at the very basic molecular
level. In fact, we are now working with the National Cancer
Institute to see if we could build what is called a
micromolecular sensor, using biological mechanisms and advanced
nano-technology to build sensors that could be ingested into
the human being, that could then sense and probe throughout the
body and detect early signs of disease, feed it out, diagnose
it, and then perhaps even apply a therapy. This is a 20-year
vision. We need these technologies if we are ever going to send
people out on missions for two to four years or longer.
We are working with biotechnology to make advanced
materials. We are working with biotechnology to enhance the
health of the astronauts. We are working with biotechnology to
even build things like protein motors, protein motors. So there
is a whole variety of devices. Advanced software, advanced
computing and information systems. So that is the thrust of
this area.
Mrs. Meek. Thank you. I have one more question if I have
time.
remote sensing center
If you remember last year, Mr. Goldin, the Committee
included funding for the University of Miami Advanced Tropical
Remote Sensing Center. That center uses satellites to monitor
ocean currents, wave motion, temperature, soil properties and
other environmental data day and night with incredible
accuracy. I trust that this project is moving forward and that
you will let me know if problems should come up, and if you
would like to just explain what that really does other than
what the university has perceived.
Mr. Goldin. First, I just looked over to Dr. Asrar, who
assures me that it is proceeding forward and it is properly
funded. I only know the very rudimentary aspects, so if it is
okay with you, I would like to ask Dr. Asrar to come up and
give a more comprehensive description.
Mrs. Meek. Sure. Thank you, Mr. Goldin.
Dr. Asrar. Thank you again for the opportunity. The group
in Miami is really a world leader in the area of understanding
the role of oceans in the earth system, and they are one of the
centers of excellence in taking the satellite data, combining
them with models to understand the role of oceans and coastal
regions, as well as helping the fisheries industry. So that
group is very busy, because they are getting a great deal of
useful data from the latest satellite that we launched called
Terra Spacecraft, combined with a number of other satellites,
generating these products on behalf of the large ocean
community and making that information available to them as well
as the fisheries industry. So they had the infrastructure. We
received a very good proposal from them, and we are working
with them to extend their facilities through these funds to
make this information more available to less traditional users,
primarily fisheries industries and those who are interestedin
assessing the impact of the coastal changes on the life in the coastal
regions. So it is a very productive activity, and they are world
leaders, and they are doing an excellent job.
funding for the Kennedy Space Center
Mrs. Meek. Thank you. Thank you.
One other question, Mr. Goldin. I notice that your budget
reduces funding for the--you knew I was going to get to this,
Mr. Goldin--funding for the Kennedy Space Center, the
International Space Station Account. For the third year in a
row you have reduced the funding there for the International
Space Center from 113.4 million in fiscal year 1999 to 92
million for your proposed 2001 budget. On the other hand,
funding for KSC under the Human Space Flight Account increases
for the third year in a row from 173 million in fiscal year
1999 to 222.6 million in your fiscal year 2001 budget. I would
like to know your reasoning for these reductions and increases.
Mr. Goldin. I believe it is the flow of testing that is
going on at Kennedy. We did the multi-element integration test,
MEIT, Phase I at Kennedy. during the last year or so there was
a large amount of funding, and then it will come down a bit,
and then it will just ebb and flow with the level of testing
that is going through. It is not a question of metering money
to the Kennedy Center, but we have supplied the resources that
they need to do that specific job.
shuttle upgrades
Mrs. Meek. All right. As a member of Congress representing
Florida, as all of you know, that is the home of the Kennedy
Space Center. I am really concerned, in my last visit, at the
infrastructure at the center and the corresponding safety
implications for flight operations. Do you have any plans to
upgrade the facility at Kennedy?
Mr. Goldin. As part of the shuttle upgrade activity we are
asking people to take a look at critical infrastructure and
identify those things that are necessary because of the safety
issue. We will then put that into the total list of things we
are doing, and if it is appropriate, we will fund the things
necessary to guarantee safety.
Mrs. Meek. So that if these upgrades do not occur, they
might impact the safety or reliability of the shuttle program
there?
Mr. Goldin. Well, Well, we believe that it is crucial to
make the investments necessary to safely maintain that shuttle
because human life is involved. So whatever the level of the
budget is, we will always request the funding necessary to keep
the shuttle safe. Let me say it a different way. If there are
cuts, we will not take cuts in the shuttle line.
Mrs. Meek. Thank you. And there is a timetable for these
upgrades, Mr. Goldin?
Mr. Goldin. We have identified a number of upgrades, and we
are going to ask the NASA Advisory Council Task Team to look at
it, to validate that they really will be improvements in
safety, and take a look at the cost effectiveness of each one
before we commit to them and have a final schedule.
I might point out that the total budget for NASA Kennedy in
2000 is 919 million, and in 2001 it is 1,043,000,000. So some
tasks may go down and some tasks may go up, but it is the ebb
and flow of the work that we fund, and we do not worry about
dollars for specific tasks. We want to make sure we are doing
the right tasks, so I believe we have it funded out properly--
budgeted out properly.
Mrs. Meek. Thank you, Mr. Goldin. I see why you are a
doctor in space. [Laughter.]
Mr. Goldin. My wife thinks I am in space all the time.
Mrs. Meek. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Walsh. Thank you, and thank you for your advocacy for
NASA. I very much appreciate your helping us to raise the NASA
budget above the last year's request, and we really have a
challenge this year to do it again.
Mr. Frelinghuysen?
X-33, 34, and 37
Mr. Frelinghuysen. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I would like to cover very briefly five areas. I would like
to know somewhat the status of some of our rocket planes, X-33,
34 and 37. I have some questions that relate to your
relationship with the FAA. Thirdly, some issues that relate to
the IG's report, recent report. Some questions on alternative
access, and then lastly, if there is time, on the issue of
effective communications, and you are a very good communicator,
if I may say so.
In your prepared comments you mentioned, and I quote, ``The
test version of the X-34 rocket plane made its first captive
carry flight towards certification in preparation for using new
technologies.'' And that is obviously a positive development.
What happened to the X-33 and issues that related to the tank?
You mentioned here also in your comments, ``The X-33 composite
hydrogen tank did not pass its qualification test and launch
plans for the assembly of the ISS were delayed.'' Things are
occurring simultaneously. We are moving ahead with 37 and 34.
Where does 33 stand, specifically related to these issues?
Mr. Goldin. The X-33 is, of all three vehicles, the one
that is pushing the technology the furthest. X-34 goes to, I
believe almost mach-8 in powered flight. The X-33 will go to
almost mach-14 in powered flight. The X-33 pushed the limits
everywhere. In fact, on the good news side of the X-33 we have
developed and built the first major new rocket engine, the
first new rocket concept in America in 25 or 30 years, and that
testing is going great.
They have hydrogen tanks which are at very cold
temperatures that are the largest most complex tanks to my
knowledge that have ever been built, and we had a problem in
knowing how to build those tanks out of composite material, and
they failed the test. So this is the kind of thing that
happens, and we will understand what went wrong.
It appears now that based on a new configuration change
they have for the vehicle, we might be able to operate this
vehicle with aluminum tanks, which it will be simpler and
easier to build. 20/20 vision a year or two later.
Mr. Frelinghuysen. Are these the same tanks that would be
used for the other rocket planes?
Mr. Goldin. We believe so.
Mr. Frelinghuysen. So your success with this particular
venture has a direct relation with the others.
Mr. Goldin. Oh, yes. A lot of it applies. And these tanks
are much bigger than the tanks on the other rockets, so we will
be pushing the boundaries. And we have to make a decision, do
we stick with the composites for the hydrogen tank or do we
switch to an aluminum tank? And we will make that decision in
the next few months.
operational venture star
Mr. Frelinghuysen. In the overall scheme of things, you had
a target date for an operational Venture Star that had been--
toward the end of 2004?
Mr. Goldin. Right at this point in time, we, with themutual
agreement of Lockheed Martin are going to focus on getting the X-33
built and flown, and I think we need to wait on decisions for the
Venture Star, because that is a decision that Lockheed Martin has to
make themselves. There is a lot of technology. This is a really tough
job, and Lockheed is going to wait to make decisions on Venture Star.
They are moving in doing system designs, but I think they are going to
hold on major investment till we see what happens with the X-33.
The other point I made to Mr. Walsh--we intend to have some
significant competition, and we at NASA do not want to pick
winners and losers in the commercial marketplace, so we would
like to see competition to the Venture Star concept, and we
want competition to occur from both big and small companies. So
we are going to cast the net widely in the next range of
competitions, and Venture Star will be but one of the competing
approaches.
relationship with federal aviation administration
Mr. Frelinghuysen. Shifting gears, what exactly is your
relationship with the Federal Aviation Administration? You may
or may not know that Mr. Walsh and my area, the New York/New
Jersey Metropolitan Area, is first in line for a major redesign
of the airspace. It is a huge metropolitan area. Many of us are
unhappy that Jane Garvey says that they need five years to
complete this study. Are you intimately involved working with
the FAA? It seems that five years, I mean, given the type of
technology that you have outlined here, the three pillars, I
mean, that in and of itself is absolutely fascinating and
remarkable. One would think as a lay person that somebody at
the FAA could get off their rear end after two years, rather
than wait five years to redesign this airspace. Here we are
talking about public safety issues for the traveling public who
use airplanes, but we are also talking somewhat provincially
and maybe nationally, aircraft noise issues.
What specifically is your relationship with the FAA? You
appear to have the technology and willpower. I am not sure
whether you would want to comment on whether they have the same
resolve, but what is your relationship?
Mr. Goldin. I think it is a very healthy relationship. In
1998 I signed a cooperative agreement, memorandum of
understanding with Administrator Garvey. We support the FAA
with long-range advanced technologies. We are looking at
technologies in the 5 to 15-year time frame. We take
technologies--and let me give you a measurement of scale. We
have a scale on technologies that go from technology readiness
level 1 to technology readiness level 10. 10 is in production.
Technology level 1, readiness level 1 is a concept. So we will
take things between 3 and 6, and then it needs to be handed
over to industry, matured and integrated into systems. We do
not get into taking things that have been verified in
technology but not put into production, not integrated into the
system. The FAA will take it from technology readiness level 6
and put it into the system. So that is where the interface
between us and the FAA is.
They have been very supportive of our aviation safety
program. We are working on a aviation safety program, using the
technologies that I talked about today, that within 10 years
will help the FAA and the airline industry cut the crash rate
of planes by a factor of 5. Now, the specific project you are
talking about I think is an application of nearer term
technologies than the technologies I am talking about.
Mr. Frelinghuysen. But are you weighing in on that redesign
effort?
Mr. Goldin. We do not get into redesign effort. We are a
technology arm to the FAA. They make the decision----
aircraft noise issues
Mr. Frelinghuysen. You have been involved, obviously, and
according to your testimony, in aircraft noise issues, and from
what I can gather, you have done some commendable work. The
public ought to know more about what you are doing.
Mr. Goldin. Again, we are working with the great U.S.
aircraft engine companies, Pratt-Whitney and GE, to develop
techniques to reduce it, and as we develop these techniques, we
work--and by the way, the FAA is involved with us from day one,
so when it has to go to certification, we can cut the
certification period.
So I really believe it is a good relationship. I have
tremendous confidence in Jane Garvey's working with us, and I
think our team is doing a good job to complement what the FAA
is doing.
inspector general's top management challenges
Mr. Frelinghuysen. Well, I am glad to hear that.
The Inspector General recently submitted a list of this
year's top management challenges. I assume you are pretty
familiar with those findings. Do you agree with those findings?
Mr. Goldin. Let me just review it now. Which document?
Mr. Frelinghuysen. The IG list of this year's top 10
management challenges.
Mr. Goldin. Are these the environmental issues?
Mr. Frelinghuysen. Well, this relates to cost overruns,
things of that nature.
Mr. Walsh. Would it be helpful to have the Inspector
General to come forward and respond?
Mr. Frelinghuysen. Well, actually, what I was wondering
whether----
Mr. Goldin. I am trying to see the list. Can I just take a
look at the list?
Mr. Frelinghuysen. I would be happy to.
Mr. Goldin. I cannot pull it out of my book right now. I do
not know where it is.
Mr. Frelinghuysen. This was directed to the majority leader
or--yes, to the House majority leader, Dick Armey. Are you
familiar with this list?
Mr. Goldin. Yes, is the answer.
Mr. Frelinghuysen. Have you had a chance to review that
letter?
Mr. Goldin. Yes, is the answer.
Mr. Frelinghuysen. Could you comment on it?
Mr. Goldin. I believe that we are committed to addressing
the issues that the IG brought up. People have been assigned to
tasks, and we will be responding to all of them.
Mr. Frelinghuysen. Have there been some issues in terms of
cost overruns?
Mr. Goldin. Sure there have. And we need to deal with them.
The IG did a number of studies of the cost overruns. In fact,
one of the studies she did was at my urging. We were having
some serious problems with the Boeing Company on their rate
structure, and she did a very important report on this subject,
and we are processing the input we got from her. In our
dealings with Boeing, she made recommendations on where we
ought to be working with Boeingon fee considerations, and we
are listening to what she had to say.
alternative access
Mr. Frelinghuysen. Thank you very much. Alternative access.
I understand that the alternative access line within the space
launch initiative is designed to pay for commercial resupply
missions to the international space station. Opening this
market to vehicles other than the shuttle could stimulate the
space transportation industry and provide NASA with reliable
supply alternatives should the shuttle fleet be grounded for
any period of time.
What are exactly NASA's intentions?
Mr. Goldin. We are going to hold a workshop with the
industry. We want to solicit the very best ideas on the
subject. We are not going to be prescriptive because there are
a lot of good ideas out there.
Mr. Frelinghuysen. A lot of enthusiasts out there too.
Mr. Goldin. And the one thing we will do is establish the
safety requirements for docking with the space station, because
that is a very precious resource up there. And we intend to, in
the first round, award as many as four contracts to study this,
and then we will throw a wide open competition and look for the
very best ideas.
Mr. Frelinghuysen. Are there qualifications that potential
providers would be required to fill?
Mr. Goldin. Safety.
Mr. Frelinghuysen. Safety?
Mr. Goldin. The safety issue is going to be our principal
goal, and then we will let the marketplace decide whether there
is something to be had here.
aerospace technology enterprise
Mr. Frelinghuysen. And lastly, relative to the three
pillars you mentioned at the end of your testimony--this has to
do with the aerospace technology enterprise--how do you
actually get information about these three pillars out to the
public? I mean, there is a lot of material in here that may be
out in the public domain. Is it in the public domain?
Mr. Goldin. Yes. It comes through our Website. We have
brochures. We meet regularly with the industry and local
communities, and we make sure it is available. We are now
working with the Aerospace States Association because we have a
new initiative called a Small Aircraft Transportation System,
which fits into the safety activities, although it is funded as
a separate focused program, and we want to disburse this
information to every American that is interested.
Mr. Frelinghuysen. It is incredibly exciting, all of the
things that are listed in there. Quite honestly, I am not sure
a lot of the public knows that this information is there, but I
am going to work to make sure they do know. Thank you very
much, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, Mr. Goldin.
Mr. Walsh. Are there any other questions of Mr. Goldin?
[No response.]
Mr. Walsh. Nobody? We will submit some additional questions
for the record. We thank you for your testimony today. I think
we had a good hearing, and we look forward to our hearing on
March 30th to discuss ongoing programs and the Young report
specifically. We thank you very much.
Mr. Goldin. Thank you.
----------
Thursday, April 6, 2000.
Chairman's Opening Remarks
Mr. Walsh. The Subcommittee hearing will come to order. Mr.
Mollohan is on his way. He asked that we begin, and he will be
with us presently.
This afternoon, we convene our second hearing on NASA's
budget request for fiscal year 2001. We would like to welcome
Dan Goldin, the NASA Administrator, as well as the Associate
Administrators responsible for management of NASA's numerous
space and aeronautics programs.
Although NASA continues to pull off some amazingly
successful missions, the recent Hubble repair mission and the
spacecraft rendezvous with EROS Asteroid come to mind, the past
year has been very difficult for the space agency and the
American taxpayer. Many high-profile programs continue to be
plagued with problems, but hopefully the worst is behind us.
The on-again/off-again assembly of the International Space
Station has been put on hold for a year and a half. I am sure
you can understand our Committee's skepticism of Russia's
promise to launch the long-delayed service module in July. We
remember hearing testimony concerning their intention to de-
orbit the Mir back in 1998 and again in 1999.
I do not know if there is a communication problem, but I am
beginning to wonder if we are talking about the same MIR.
This morning, two Russian cosmonauts docked with Mir with
what Russian officials are describing as the beginning of anew
lease on life for the aging space laboratory, something to do with
turning the place into a hotel for wealthy adventurers.
I believe Mir will eventually fall from orbit, but only
after the forces of nature overtake its ability to remain
aloft, not by the deliberate actions of the Russian government.
I, along with many of my colleagues, have serious doubts
about whether a cash-strapped Russia can support both the Mir
and the International Space Station programs. This week's
mission to reawaken Mir used the progress and vehicles the
United States paid for and were originally dedicated for the
International Space Station.
If Russia fails to launch the Service Module this summer,
NASA must be prepared to fly the Interim Control Module in
December and accelerate the design and construction of the U.S.
Propulsion Module. We will not allow the program to be held
hostage indefinitely.
Space station delays have negatively impacted other NASA
operations. Much of the space shuttle fleet, which was grounded
for almost 6 months due to maintenance problems, sits idle
waiting for Russia to fulfill its commitment to the ISS
program. Meanwhile, opportunities to fly shuttle research
missions have been lost.
For the past 2 years, this Committee has been lectured by
NASA and the President's Office of Management and Budget on how
there is no room on the shuttle fleet tight manifest to fly an
additional research mission or schedule once-a-year dedicated
research missions. It is time for NASA and OMB to start
managing the shuttle fleet more effectively by taking advantage
of the delays in the space station program and filling the gaps
with research missions. It would seem to be in the interest of
NASA and the scientific community.
NASA sold the $60-billion Space Station program to Congress
promising that valuable scientific research would occur on the
station. With the shuttle dedicated almost exclusively to Space
Station construction flights for the next 4 years and no
science research beyond the flight in January of 2001, I wonder
if there will be any scientists left who will be interested in
doing space-based research.
If the space station is to fulfill its promise of being a
cutting-edge scientific laboratory, the life and micro-gravity
programs need to become a higher priority for NASA.
Another high-profile program is under review. Recently, two
important missions to Mars were lost, calling into question
some of the fundamental management practices of NASA and its
paradigm of faster, better, cheaper. The Mars program
assessment team chaired by Thomas Young issued its report to
NASA on March 22 and to the public on March 28. The team found
significant problems with the management of the Mars program,
including inexperienced project managers, inadequate budgets,
and inflexible schedules all leading to excessive risk.
Let me state for the record that this committee and the
Congress provided all of the funds NASA requested for these two
projects, and a review of NASA operating plans for fiscal years
'95 and '98 indicated that the committee approved increases
totalling over $19 million.
If the Mars program has been underfunded, that problem
originated in the Administration, not in the Congress. Perhaps
we were not aggressive enough in questioning NASA's cost
estimates, but we tend to give you the benefit of the doubt
when you are trying to test the limits. This is clearly a case
where the limits were exceeded. We look forward to working with
you throughout the summer to reevaluate the costs of all your
programs and make adjustments where necessary.
That may mean we will have to add significant amounts of
money to the President's budget request, or it may mean that we
must cancel some projects to ensure priorities are adequately
funded.
If your management is spread too thin, we will add people.
We are trying to do that with the additional funding we put in
the fiscal year 2000 supplemental appropriations bill which
passed the House last week, but if the Senate does not deal
with the supplemental, then we must seriously consider
canceling some programs or projects so management will not be
stretched further. We will not allow NASA to be spread so thin
that projects are not adequately managed or risk is
inappropriately increased.
In sum, while NASA has managed to realize its program goals
of faster and cheaper, it cannot claim the Mars program is
better. Better cannot be achieved without mastering the basics.
It is clear to the committee that in its rush to meet
inflexible schedules, the agency neglected the fundamentals.
The Young report findings can be distilled to one important
factor having to do with money, the failure to communicate. A
lack of honest and frank discussion between JPL and NASA
headquarters concerning the program's budget, schedule, and
expectations cost us the Mars Climate Orbiter, the Mars Polar
Lander, and the Deep Space 2 Probes. This is ironic because
NASA's Office of Space Science and Jet Propulsion Labs are the
experts in operating extremely sophisticated equipment allowing
them to communicate with the Voyager spacecraft over 7 billion
miles away.
Before any new programs are started, the piece of
communications NASA, JPL, and all the centers need to master is
the telephone. No program should be doomed by fear and
intimidation.
We have many questions for NASA and will spend this
afternoon exploring those questions. For example, why did it
take two mission failures and an independent review board to
discover the lack of communications and misunderstanding
between JPL and NASA headquarters? Does this communication
problem exist with other science programs at other NASA centers
and other contractors? Most importantly, is the safety of our
human spaceflight program at risk?
I would at this time normally recognize Mr. Mollohan for an
opening statement. He is not here, but I would at this point
welcome Mr. Goldin's opening statement and then I will yield to
Alan when he arrives.
introduction of nasa staff
Mr. Goldin. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Before I start, I would like to introduce the team here at
the table. The first day of hearings were general discussions,
and I wielded most of the questions, but, today, I think it is
appropriate that at given points in the hearing, you hear from
the staff here.
Dr. Weiler is the head of the Office of Space Science.
Brian Keegan is the chief engineer. Mal Peterson is the NASA
Comptroller. Joe Rothenberg is the head of the Space Flight
Program. Sam Venneri is the head of Aerospace Research and
Technology, and Dr. Asrar is the head of the Earth Science
Program.
mars report
Mr. Chairman, good afternoon. Today, we resume our
testimony before you on NASA's proposed 2001 budget. Since we
were here last, the report of the Mars program independent
assessment team under Tom Young, an in-depth review of the
entire Mars program commissioned deliberately by NASA has been
released.
Before we resume discussion of the NASA budget request, I
would like to take a moment to address the Young report. Last
week, I flew to California to discuss with JPL the findings of
the Young report and their future, and there is one thing that
sticks in my mind. I spoke to the young people that worked on
Mars '98, and they said to me, ``Dan, don't let the pendulum
swing back in the other direction.'' We believed it was going
to be successful until the very last minute, and on the Mars
Climate Orbiter, they were that close to success and had
failure.
faster, better, cheaper
When I was sworn in as NASA Administration in April of '92,
I set out a new agenda. NASA had outstanding people and
incredible support from the American people, but NASA had a
problem. It was clinging very tightly to the past, placing a
value on large cumbersome missions and infrastructure and not
enough on cutting-edge R&D in support of our space and
aeronautics. NASA's missions were taking too long, taking too
little risk, and costing too much.
Instead, I proposed empowering a NASA work force asking
them to tell us how we could implement our missions in a more
cost-effective manner, how can we do everything better, faster,
and cheaper without compromising safety, and I might point out,
I intentionally was nonprescriptive because this is how the
Federal Government has operated and it is this prescription and
people who watch people who watch people is what costs money,
and when failure occurs, it is the punishment of that failure
that makes people paralyzed.
Knowing that change is difficult, even when there is little
or no choice, I pledged to the work force that we would not be
overly prescriptive and we would not micromanage and we would
encourage them to take risks, do things differently, even if it
involved deviation from prior experience, so long as it
followed sound principles, but I reminded them to recognize
that in pressing boundaries they would encounter failure.
In replacing billion-dollar missions with multiple smaller
missions and flying them more frequently, they would expect two
to three failures in every 10 attempts, but 10 successes out of
10 attempts would mean that they were not adequately pushing
the boundaries, and more than two or three failures out of 10
attempts would be too many.
nasa's report card
Since that time, the revolution has taken hold, and NASA
has had spectacular successes, and here is our report card.
Since 1992, NASA has launched 146 payloads valued at $18
billion. Of this number, 136 were successful. Our total losses
amounted to 10 payloads measured at about a half-billion
dollars, a big number, but less than 3 percent of the total of
the payloads launched.
Planetary spacecraft once launched twice a decade at a cost
measured in billions now routinely are launched each year at a
small fraction of that cost. This is world-class performance by
any reasonable standard.
We also continually monitor our management practices
evolving our program management instructions to incorporate
more flexible, responsive, and creative processes to give
people freedom, and that freedom included freedom to fail.
We wanted to demonstrate to the world that NASA could do
things much better, and NASA delivered. Mars Pathfinder, Global
Surveyor, Deep Space 1, we pushed the boundaries like never
before and had not yet reached our limit, not until Mars '98.
nasa failures
Then we encountered back-to-back failures of the Mars
Climate Orbiter, Mars Polar Lander, and Deep Space 2
Microprobes. We are examining these failures in microscopic
detail, and let me assure you, Mr. Chairman, we beat ourselves
more than anyone on the outside can do.
We established red teams to evaluate the launch readiness
of all our planned missions for this year, and since we
launched the Mars '98 missions, we have had 12 spectacular
successes, FUSE, QuikSCAT, Stardust, Landsat-7, Terra, Chandra,
the Hubble Servicing Mission, the Shuttle Radar Topology
Mission, and IMAGE. I might point out on the Shuttle Radar
Topology Mission, we had a problem and it was communicated and
it involved the safety of the astronauts and the wonderful
people at JPL fixed it without any help or supervision from
NASA headquarters. I do take issue that we are not better, and
I want to openly state that.
We have concluded that in spite of our overall success
rate, we decided, and the fact that we are still roughly within
the bounds I set, two or three failures for every 10 missions,
the warning bells of a trend are sounding. So we will take a
pause, but we will not go back to command and control and
people who watch people who watch people and detailed
specifications and requirements that suppress the creative
thought process.
young report
I agree with the conclusions of the Young report. In fact,
I told the leader of the Mars '98 team that in my effort to
empower people, I personally pushed too hard, and in doing so
stretched the system too thin. As NASA Administrator, I accept
responsibility, but I cannot apologize for trying to give the
American taxpayers a real vision and pay less money.
Mistakes were made that could have been avoided and must
and should be corrected. The Young report reminds us how
important it is to have adequate margins in planning and
executing programs, but that is not a license to turn on the
funding spigot. This is always the inclination when it comes to
Federal funds. There is always a temptation for some to freely
spend hard-earned taxpayer money, but there are many things
that we can do that do not involve money, and that is going to
be our first priority.
Specifically, we know that we had three main areas to work
on that will not cost money, as you pointed out, Mr. Chairman,
communication, training and mentoring, and oversight and
review. We will implement improvements in these areas by
focussing upon people, processes, execution and advanced tools
and technology.
I want to remind this committee how strongly I believe that
we should not throw money at these challenges. Where it is
appropriate, we will add funding, but I am not asking this
committee for a nickel more than our pending fiscal 2001
request unless there is an overwhelming compelling need, and we
will be performing an analysis over the coming months, and in
the event we need more money, we can and will come to you
because we believe you are fair and balanced here.
I want the message to go out to our work force and our
contractors. Do not look to fit yourselves under the umbrella
of get-well funding. I will continue to hold you fully
accountable.
We are already taking additional steps to address the Young
report. We are streamlining management to the Mars Surveyor
program at NASA Headquarters and JPL. We are redefining the
entire Mars program architecture, and we will be able to
discuss it with you later this year.
The NASA chief engineer is putting together a matrix that
will incorporate NASA's responses to all the reports concerning
program management, to ensure consistency of best practices,
and update on management processes to take into account what we
have learned from the Mars mission failures, but undertaking
these improvements does not mean reversing our course in
pursuit of revolutionary change.
Just as a mission failure does not diminish our success, it
will not deter us from our goals or paralyze us in self-doubt.
fy 2001 budget request
Mr. Chairman, I am compelled one more time to share with
you how crucial it is for the NASA's fiscal 2001 request to be
fully funded. It is the first budget in many, many, many years
with an increase, and it is a modest increase, just about the
rate of inflation. It is an affirmation what the NASA work
force has been striving to accomplish for the past several
years. It includes critical infusion of funding for a shuttle
safety initiative, including important new hiring, as you
pointed out, a space launch initiative, and additional funding
for the Mars program in anticipation of the various reviews
just completed.
I am committed to the dedicated and courageous employees
across the country. Including the wonderful JPL work force last
week that I talked to, I committed to them that I would press
NASA's case with you today. Given the sacrifices this work
force has made in streamlining NASA's budget since '93, I hope
you will do all you can to make this very good budget request a
reality.
Mr. Chairman, my team and I are prepared to respond to all
your questions. Thank you for listening to me.
[The information follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
mars program
Mr. Walsh. Thank you very much, sir.
Mr. Mollohan, do you have any opening statement you would
like to make?
Mr. Mollohan. No, thank you.
Mr. Walsh. All right. We will begin with some questions,
then. Since I had such a long opening statement, I will just
ask in one area and then I will go to Mr. Mollohan.
In the Young report, of the two Mars programs, either the
Climate Orbiter or the Lander, the management structure was not
in place.
Normally, there is a project manager start to finish, and
this was not the case with this program. Can you respond?
Mr. Goldin. Mr. Chairman, I think this is one I would like
to address.
Mr. Walsh. Sure.
Mr. Goldin. I think this gets to the heart and soul of what
the issue is. The people at JPL had a success on the Pathfinder
and the Mars Global Surveyor which were launched in '96 and
arrived in '98. They were very, very upbeat about it. They did
that in-house. They made a decision that was uncharacteristic
to JPL. They said they are going to try something new. So they
said they would have a systems contract that they would let
with the Lockheed Martin Company. They had not done bottom-line
systems contracts before, but it was a new attempt.
The second thing they wanted to do was to do development
for all the individual Mars programs separately and have a
combined operating system for all the spacecraft. It was a
complete management decision saying we think we could save
money and have more efficient operators and be more capable of
handling problems in one control center instead of five
separate centers.
As a result, we had a break. So we had a development
manager, and then we handed over to the operations. The problem
was there was not good communications. This was the first time
out of the chute for them in handing off from development to
operations.
It clearly was an attempt to try and do things differently,
and I believe in large part led to the problems we had. It
certainly led to the problems on the Mars Climate Orbiter and
to a large degree led to the problems we had on the Mars Polar
Lander because there was a third organization involved. JPL had
always done things womb to tomb.
But I want to come back to a very basic principle that is
important. When I met with the JPL employees 2 months after I
took office in '92, I told them I wanted them to take risk. I
met with 50 young people, and they said, ``Mr. Goldin, we will
take risk. What is the first thing that happens when we have
failure? We are going to be pummeled. Would you stand behind
us?'' I said to them, ``Under no conditions will anyone take
responsibility except me because I am empowering you.''
So we could go through a lot of detail in this session
today, but I ask you to keep in mind if we keep focussing on
two failures when we broke our programs into small parts so if
we had a failure it would not be taxing on the American
taxpayer, we are going to dissuade people from trying to do
these courageous things like having a mission operations
center.
I think we will be able to do it, but we have to make some
fixes.
Mr. Walsh. I understand that, and I understand that we
learn by our successes. We probably learn more by our failure
and mistakes.
Mr. Goldin. Yes, sir.
Mr. Walsh. Does NASA go with this new paradigm of a
management structure that was suggested, or do you go back to
the one project manager start to finish, womb to tomb as you
describe it?
Mr. Goldin. We will have a project manager womb to tomb,
and that project manager will follow the whole project, butit
does not mean we still cannot get the efficiency of having an
operations center.
The problem was there was not a project manager to be the
advocate for the Mars Climate Orbiter in this combined project
center. So we had that mistake, and we will fix it.
Mr. Walsh. Right. Thank you.
Mr. Mollohan.
additional funding
Mr. Mollohan. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Goldin, you indicated pretty strongly, if I am
understanding your testimony right, that additional funding is
not the answer here. Elaborate on that, and to what extent do
you really mean that?
As I understand at least part of the Young report, the one
lesson learned is that project managers strapped for funds were
not able to take all of the steps that they should have taken,
some of which the report indicates would have prevented the
failure.
So, when you say there is no more funds needed, how do you
mean that?
Mr. Goldin. Sure.
Mr. Mollohan. No more funds other than your request
addressed?
Mr. Goldin. Here is my concern, Mr. Mollohan. We probably
will need more money. There were some estimates made by the
Young panel that it is 30 to 50 percent. They did not have a
lot of time to go through the analysis, but I could tell you
what is happening right now across the space program. Every
single program is now coming back and telling us how much more
money they need.
I talked to the folks out at JPL, and they told me the
planetary programs to the outer planets, the budgets are going
through the roof, and the reason I said the words that I said
is, I want to see, before we add more money is that we have the
right kind of mentoring. It does not cost money to assign a
mentor to an inexperienced project manager. We will have the
right kind of training. It does not cost extra money to train
people properly. We will have reviews where instead of people
having a close circle of their people that they know review
them, they will pick people that will have different attitudes.
That does not cost money. It does not cost money to properly
look at the requirements versus the resources before the
program goes into a hard start. There is always a temptation to
start a program without inadequate thought to the requirements.
In fact, the IG has been very concerned about that at NASA.
Then, after we do all these things, we will make sure there is
adequate money for testing, that the programs have adequate
funding for things that are of interest to you, and I think you
are right, independent verification and validation of software,
that there is adequate money for hardware, but all I was trying
to emphasize is I would like to make sure that each of our
center directors, each of our contractors addresses those
important issues where it does not cost money to do the right
thing before they send a bill in that is going to be
prohibitive, and if there is not more money for NASA stretch
our program out too far.
Mr. Mollohan. I can understand where it might not cost
money to change attitudes or to heighten caution, but it does
cost more money to do additional training, for example, which
you just stated?
Mr. Goldin. It does not cost 30 to 50 percent of a budget.
Mr. Mollohan. What do you mean? Where is this 30 to 50
percent of a budget? What budget are you talking about?
Mr. Goldin. The Young report indicated they believed we
would have to spend between 30 and 50 percent more on programs
like the Mars Climate Orbiter.
Mr. Mollohan. Each program?
Mr. Goldin. Each program.
Mr. Mollohan. That is your whole budget.
Mr. Goldin. Each program. I do not want to argue with that.
All I am saying is----
Mr. Mollohan. You are just saying that is a number that
needs----
Mr. Goldin. Fundamental things.
Mr. Mollohan [continuing]. Verifying.
Mr. Goldin. I will give you another thing that does not
cost money. The Lockheed Martin is a good company, but not
outstanding. Where was their senior management?
Mr. Mollohan. That is a good question. Where do you think
they were?
Mr. Goldin. Engaged in a lot of other issues and problems
that they have. It does not cost money to do some fundamental
things.
Mr. Mollohan. So where were their senior management in
this?
Mr. Goldin. They certainly were not engaged in the Mars
Climate Orbiter and Mars Polar Lander Program. I went out to
Lockheed Martin a year ago to award medals to some of the
people out there, and not one senior executive from Lockheed
Martin was there when the NASA Administrator was at their
plant.
I spoke to their people about some of the problems they
were having with the landing systems, and I passed that along
to their management and I passed that along to the Lockheed
Martin management.
Again, I do not think we have bad people. My only intention
is--I come from the private sector. When you have a problem in
the private sector, you do not run to the corporate treasurer
for more money first. There is a tendency in the Federal
Government to do that, and if I look at the news stories over
the last 2 to 3 weeks, the answers seem to be more money, and I
am saying let's take a deep breath----
Mr. Mollohan. You would say go through a process first and
identify where you need the additional money.
Mr. Goldin. Yes. I can only tell you the NASA Comptroller
is getting inundated by everybody that thinks they are going to
fall under this umbrella, and I am taking a very passionate
emotional position here saying we would love to come back after
we have taken the time to see what we could do that does not
cost money and then establish what we have to spend more money
on. That is the only reason I am a little forceful on this
issue.
Mr. Mollohan. These reports did, when we looked at them,
pretty consistently identify concerns with regard to project
and program management, did they not?
Mr. Goldin. Well, let me bring up an issue that the NASA
Comptroller identified to me. At CDR there were financial
reserves in the budget, but there was a reluctance to spend
those reserves.
Had there been connectivity with senior management on
theprogram, maybe they would have spent those reserves on things that
could have been fixed. Again, the people were really committed.
Could I show you a chart? Because I think this chart tells
the story. This is where I arrived at the agency at $590
million a spacecraft. This is where we have developed an
average cost in '95 to '99, and this is where the Administrator
pushed too hard.
I said we were so successful in picking up a factor of
three in cost per spacecraft, let's push harder, and those
young people listened to me. That is why they are not at fault.
I am at fault. I pushed them because we did not know the
boundary.
So what I am saying to you today is what we want to do is
see how far back do we want to come on the goal for the next 5
years of spacecraft. It used to take 8 years from design to
launch for spacecraft. We brought it down to five. We were
shooting for three. Maybe we ought to take that.
But here is the other part of the issue. We worked on
average of two free-flying spacecraft a year, and this is '90
to '94, seven in '95 to '99, and we are planning 11 in '00 to
'04. Coming up this curve was a learning experience. We did not
have all the experienced people. The tradition was you have a
60-year-old project manager that has four decades of
experience. We had a new team on board.
So, again, in answer to one of the issues you brought up,
there was inexperience. It was not malice aforethought. These
young people said they want to take the Administrator's
challenge. I am responsible because I pushed them too hard. I
did not know where the boundaries were, and all I am saying is
we are going to take 2, 3 months and very systematically
through the leadership of Brian Keegan and this team here
understand it and then come back and say what we need.
program management working group
Mr. Mollohan. I think you indicated in your last testimony
that you were going to assemble some sort of task force to
address these issues.
Mr. Goldin. This is the leader of the task force.
Mr. Mollohan. The task force is appointed and underway?
Mr. Keegan. I can elaborate on that if you would like. What
in fact has existed within the agency, an agency-wide team
called the Program Management Working Group. It consists of
representatives from key headquarters offices as well as the
field centers.
In the process of considering the best course of action in
response to the recommendations of the many reports, we have
taken that team as the core and supplemented it with a few
additional folks in the human resources area and the systems
management offices which have been newly created at the field
centers to evaluate the best approach for evaluating our
generic approach to program project management and ensuring
that the best practices are more uniformly used across
programs.
We will attempt to maximize our lessons learned from the
failures. At the same time, I think we will capitalize on those
practices that have made our successes the successes that they
were.
The focus of any project team must be in making sure that
the project team itself is fully prepared to execute its
responsibilities. Emphasis on good training and communication
practices is essential and is where we will focus our effort.
That agency-wide team that has been assembled has been
tasked to come back with a set of recommended actions by the
end of May. Following that, then that will be vetted by the
Office of the Chief Engineer and some key advisors that we
assemble within headquarters and ultimately be approved by the
agency senior management team.
Mr. Mollohan. Has that team or task force been fully
identified and appointed?
Mr. Keegan. Yes, it has. It has been identified. Yes.
Mr. Mollohan. Is it advertised? Is it announced?
Mr. Keegan. Well, I mean, it has been appointed. They are
all existing people from within the agency.
Mr. Mollohan. Has the agency issued a publication about it?
Mr. Keegan. I do not believe it has been announced in a
press release, but it certainly has been general knowledge
within the agency that this team is appointed and functioning.
Mr. Mollohan. Is this going to be an open process? Do you
plan to announce the composition of the organization, and what
its mission is in any detail?
Mr. Keegan. That can certainly be done. The fact is----
Mr. Mollohan. I am just asking----
Mr. Keegan [continuing]. The clear definition of the
charter of the team is to consider the recommendations from the
various reports that have generic implications for the way the
agency manages its programs and projects.
Mr. Mollohan. What impact is this process going to have on
future and ongoing space science missions?
Mr. Keegan. I think the principal intent there is to ensure
the uniform use of best practices across all the programs that
we have. In many instances, we feel that those best practices
are currently being employed.
Mr. Mollohan. So this is more an indoctrination process
than it is anything else?
Mr. Keegan. Did you say an indoctrination process?
Mr. Mollohan. Well, a sensitizing----
Mr. Keegan. A lot of it is ensuring that the people who
populate project teams have the right set of skills in terms of
their technical competence, their communication ability, their
team and the support by the engineering institutions of the
implementing centers, and the support by their management chain
that they are fully able to implement their responsibilities
well.
Mr. Mollohan. Is this process impinging on any of the
schedules of any of the missions?
Mr. Keegan. No, it is not. What we have----
Mr. Mollohan. Nothing is on hold?
Mr. Keegan. The population of this team represents senior
project management and engineering management from across the
agency, and the conduct of this assessment is in no way
interfering with the ability of ongoing projects to get their
work done.
Mr. Mollohan. Do you imagine these problems extend beyond
the planetary exploration missions?
Mr. Keegan. I am not sure we are able to make that
judgment, frankly.
Mr. Mollohan. Are you exploring----
Mr. Keegan. I think we can. We have had some failures from
which we need to learn----
Mr. Mollohan. Yes.
Mr. Keegan. Part of that is also looking at the practices
that have made successful missions.
Mr. Mollohan. Are you looking at that agency-wide as a
result of these experiences?
Mr. Keegan. Yes, yes.
Mr. Mollohan. You are?
Mr. Keegan. In fact, certainly once the----
Mr. Mollohan. In what way?
Mr. Keegan. The action plan is defined, then we need to
have each project make an assessment of whether they are
implementing these best practices correctly and take action for
training and other activities.
Mr. Mollohan. Is this kind of a systematic look at the
whole agency----
Mr. Keegan. It is, indeed.
Mr. Mollohan [continuing]. With regard to these issues?
Mr. Keegan. Right. Recognizing there have been some
failures and we need to learn.
Mr. Goldin. Mr. Mollohan, I might add there are two other
issues. One, it is not Brian's responsibility, but we have
asked that we have red teams look at each mission prior to
launch, and we did that when we first had a problem with the
SOHO spacecraft, just about a year ago. And since that time, we
have had 12 successful launches of some incredible systems, and
it is this extra set of eyes that on the margin does not cost a
lot of money, that caused us to delay launches.
One of the launches that was delayed was the shuttle radar
topology mission where we found some significant problems. So
that is one issue.
The second is I believe that one of the problems we had was
people pushed the reserves too hard which comes back to the
issue that Mr. Walsh brought up in his opening statement, and
one of the places I expect that we will put some additional
money is in the reserves. Everyone got too bullish. We had so
much success that as the budget pressures hit, we squeezed back
too much on the reserves, and I believe that that was one of
the areas that the Young committee was concerned about. When a
design engineer does not have a reserve and has to make due
without it, that is when the frustration comes in and that is
when people begin to do dumb things.
One of the things Brian will be doing with the NASA
Comptroller and the associate administrators is establishing
what are the right level of reserves, and that is the area
where I think we are going to have to do some replenishment,
and that will then give people a little bit more elbow room so
when an engineer wants to make a fix, they know they have a
place to go.
Mr. Mollohan. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Walsh. You are welcome.
Mr. Sununu.
contingency fund
Mr. Sununu. Welcome, Mr. Goldin. As always, the focus and
clarity of your testimony is very refreshing, and the
commitment to the vision you have, whether we agree with you or
not, it makes our job easier because it does cut to the heart
of the important issues before us.
Let me begin by asking you to clarify a little bit about
the concern you just raised about the reserves. You talked
about squeezing the reserves, and I would like to know what
exactly is meant by that. Does that mean that they were
utilizing them at a higher rate or that the reserves simply
were not as large? Contrast that to the example you gave
earlier where there were reserve funds that were not used. Was
that just an exception, or am I misunderstanding what you mean
by squeezing reserves?
Mr. Goldin. First, let me say that one of the points I did
not make that the Young panel brought out very clearly is we
have to treat reserves differently for different programs. One
of the issues that is clear today, and I wish we had this
clarity before, was on a planetary program where you have to go
to a specific place in the heavens and be there at a specific
time. You have less margin. You have an absolute launch window,
and if you are not ready to launch, you are in trouble.
That makes an inordinate amount of pressure. So, on a
planetary program, one of the first things we are going to take
a look at is we are going to give them extra reserves on cost.
That was what I considered to be the biggest problem.
Mr. Sununu. Excuse me. By extra reserves, you literally
mean a contingency fund?
Mr. Goldin. Yes. Let's say the program is X. Instead of
giving them a 10-percent reserve, they would have a 15- or 20-
percent reserve because they could convert schedule into
dollars, and they have a bigger schedule problem and a much
more difficult navigation and targeting problems than others.
So the second part of your question, I believe that what
happened is we were so successful, we had success after success
after success. The management team, myself included, we got a
little heady and said, ``Gee, maybe we ought to take a 15-
percent reserve and cut it back to 10. This gives us more money
to start a new mission which is why we need to take a look at
how much dollars per mission and how long we take to do it and
how many missions we have.''
That is the kind of thing that Brian Keegan will be working
on with Mal Peterson. One size does not fit all, and we want to
make sure we have adequate reserves.
The third point is sometimes people--the reserves exist in
different places in the program. For example, NASA headquarters
could have a reserve. The JPL program office could have a
reserve, and the Lockheed Martin contractor might not have had
it , and it was coming back to a simple communication program,
no malice aforethought, but had one of the front-line design
engineers known at Lockheed Martin that there were reserves
available, they might have been able to do something better. So
the third thing we want to make sure of is we want people to
know where the reserves are and that the reserves are available
no matter where you are in the organization. So those are the
three considerations we need to look at.
service module
Mr. Sununu. Thank you.
The chairman mentioned in his remarks concerns about the
July launch date for the service module and our relationship
with the Russian Space Agency. Can you talk in a little bit
more detail about that July launch date, the status, confidence
level, and more importantly what is the budgetary implication
of missing that date?
Mr. Goldin. First, let me add something that you did not
ask, and I want to be on the record. I am highly frustrated by
the fact that the Russians signed up to a program and put such
an incredible emphasis on the Mir program, they lostsight of a
commitment they made to the President of the United States in
performing on the International Space Station.
There always seems to be a little extra money available for
Mir, but not for the International Space Station. This has
caused a problem. Now coming to the issue we have.
mir de-orbiting
Mr. Sununu. Well, no, given that you raise that point, why
don't you expand on that first a little bit because that was my
next question, which is what is NASA's formal position on Mir,
on the de-orbiting of Mir, and more specifically what has been
the effect of the Russian Space Agency's focus on maintaining
it in its current orbit.
Mr. Goldin. We indicated to Russia--they are a sovereign
nation. It is not for us to tell them what to do with their own
program. However, we said before a nickel of Government money
goes to the Mir Space Station, it will represent a breach of
the relationship that we have and they have a commitment to the
International Space Station which they are not funding.
So long as they funded the International Space Station like
they were supposed to, like they committed to, we would not
have any issue with them. We are very concerned about the
incredible emphasis on Mir, and again they are sovereign, but a
deal is a deal is a deal, and they need to put some emphasis on
funding their own program.
service module
Where are we now? The problem we are having for the service
module, the launch in July, is not financial. They had a
failure in their Proton rocket, and as it turned out, almost
every country in the world has had rocket problems. There seems
to be a little bug going around in the last 2 years.
They have fixed that problem, fixed it to our satisfaction,
and they committed to launching two to three Protons with what
they call the phase-one fix, and they have launched two of them
so far. There is, I believe, a third one coming.
We agreed with them that because this service module is so
important that they would have to make a bigger investment, and
they proposed a much more aggressive fix to the Proton. We
asked them to launch two of those Protons, and they agreed,
before we would launch a service module.
One is scheduled for launch in May. The second one is
scheduled for launch in June, and assuming that those two
rockets are successful, we believe we will be able to hold a
launch date of July 8 through July 12.
The service module itself is complete, but they are just
doing additional testing because they have some time and that
testing will be done somewhere about April 15th, April 30th. It
will be put in a packing container awaiting the launch at a
later date.
service module launch
Mr. Sununu. If you were on this appropriations panel, what
would your response be to a failure to meet that July launch
date? How should we respond to that from a budgetary
perspective? You know better than I and probably better than
most of the Members of this subcommittee what the controversies
are and the arguments are against moving forward with the pace
that we have been moving forward on the space station given its
dramatic, very significant cost, and the percentage of your
budget that it takes up every year.
I do not want to say this is potentially the straw that
breaks the camel's back, but from a budgetary perspective, how
should we react? And more importantly, if we were to react and
from an ideal perspective of providing whatever funds are
needed--if that was the response, what would it cost?
Mr. Goldin. First, let me say it would depend on what the
cause of the delay was. If the cause of the delay was
inadequate ability to fund what they said they were going to
do, I would say that that would be a major breach between our
governments, and that would require some very significant
discussion at the highest levels of government.
If the delay was caused to a failure of the rocket, I would
say this is something that everyone is subject to. The Japanese
have lost two or three rockets. The Europeans lost two rockets.
We lost four. This is something that is just the space
business. So, if it is a rocket problem, we will watch.
Now, we, because of technology transfer, cannot and should
not tell the Russians how to fix their rockets. So we have to
be dependent on them to take those actions, but I could tell
you they invited our people into their plants, and our people
feel they do a better series of tests than we do when they were
going through this rocket fix. So we are satisfied on the
rocket itself they are doing all the right things, but, again,
I come back and say we will have a major problem if they come
back and say they have to delay the launch because they do not
have adequate funds.
Mr. Sununu. I certainly agree.
Thank you very much, and thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Frelinghuysen [presiding.] Mr. Cramer.
architectural studies
Mr. Cramer. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Welcome back and thank you for giving us this information
about NASA.
Mr. Goldin. By the way, I do feel welcomed back. Really.
Mr. Cramer. Good.
Mr. Goldin. Yes, I do. Yes, I do.
Mr. Cramer. Let me see if I can direct you through some
space transportation and space launch initiative questions.
Can you talk about how the space transportation
architecture studies, the integrated space transportation plan,
and the space launch initiative are related to one another?
Mr. Goldin. Could I ask Sam Venneri who is head of the
Aerospace Technology activity to answer that?
Mr. Venneri. Yes. We initially did some architectural
studies with industry that you are referring to which is the
first set that looked at access to space, and it was primarily
focused on a commercial closure of the business case studies.
Those were done. We had mission models structured around that,
and the commercial bases for some of those outputs really did
not materialize.
Mr. Cramer. The commercial bases did not materialize?
Mr. Venneri. No. So what we are looking at now, with our
current Pathfinder, the X34, X37, X33 programs, which are
primarily experimental flight programs to get fundamental data
on engine performance, thermal protection systems, those
provide a baseline of a technology base today in this year
2000.
What we have started, what we have agreed to with the
administration, is a strategy that takes us into the next
century that is based on three parts. The first is a
restructuring of system trade studies with all the industry,
not just the large aerospace primes, but in effect going backto
what the Administration was talking about in terms of understanding
requirements, understanding the system trades for the next generation
of systems that go beyond the space shuttle, and meeting NASA unique
requirements for space access as well as that required for cargo other
than humans flying the space as part of our program.
Those studies will be initiated this year with all of the
industry participation. We have had workshops where we have
brought the emerging launch companies in along with the
established aerospace companies, told them how we were going to
approach those requirement studies this year.
From those studies, we would put together technology road
maps looking at what has been referred to as second- and third-
generation systems, advancements in technology that allows us
to make a down selection decision in the 2003 time frame that
would move off of the technology baseline we have today, and
into a demonstration of reusable systems that would allow us to
work with all of the industry.
The key tenet to that is we--one lesson that we have
learned is we are going to maintain competition. So, when we
look at this down selection in, let's say, the '03 time period,
we want and we have sufficient resources to look at maintaining
competition with at least two industry teams.
Mr. Cramer. Competition with at least two industry teams?
Mr. Venneri. A minimum of two industry teams.
We found that when you do not maintain competition, you
tend to stifle innovation and creativity, and we are looking at
maintaining the best possible position for the Government being
a customer for these services.
The other thing that we included in there is what you see
alternative access. We are looking at spending $40 million and
a total of roughly $340 million to again in the same time
period, in addition to pushing this next generation of
reusability, to look at alternative access to supplying
contingency cargoes to the station that would not require
shuttle flights.
Again, this is reaching out to what I would refer to as the
emerging launch industry. So those studies are in parallel with
the system architecture requirements. It is unique for our
needs of meeting flights to station, and in the next 2 months,
we are planning a workshop and again a solicitation of getting
proposals in to deal with what you see as a separate line
called alternative access, which is what we are looking at as
alternative access to the space station.
Mr. Cramer. So will you down-select to two winners?
Mr. Venneri. That actually could be more than two because
we are really looking at, again, competition of what could be
available, and the requirement would be not just getting
something to space, but being able to operate in close
proximity and dock and provide services to the station. So it
is not just dropping payloads off. It is the ability to do
proximity operations in the station environment.
Mr. Cramer. Will this be completed by 2005?
Mr. Venneri. Yes. We would like to have that capability for
this alternative access worked and available to us in the 2004-
2005 period.
Mr. Goldin. Mr. Cramer, could I just add one point here?
The emerging launch industry had looked towards thousand of
launches over the next 5 to 10 years, and because of the
collapse of programs like Iridium and other such programs, they
lost their commercial market.
A lot of them have very significant investments. They are
good companies. Everyone is not going to win. We have heard a
lot of talk that some of these companies want to be earmarked
into the program. I am saying this openly in this committee,
expressing a high level of concern, that we would like to run
wide-open competitions. There has been a lot of lobbying by
some of these companies, and I am making this statement not to
the committee, but to the companies that are providing this
lobbying. We, NASA----
Mr. Cramer. Were you pointing behind you? [Laughter.]
Mr. Goldin. I did this in another hearing, too, but this is
a message to the industry. If you believe in capitalism, if you
believe in a free-market economy, you should be strong enough
to compete and not have an earmark. I just would like to add
that, and I think it is important that they hear that.
alternate access to space station
Mr. Cramer. If I have any additional time, I would like to
address alternate means of resupplying the space station--you
have requested in this year's funding level $40 million for the
alternate access to space station program. Tell me how that
fits, and why the $40 million.
Mr. Venneri. Okay. What we are looking at--and if you look
at the run-out, it adds up to roughly $345 million over that
time period, $40 million the first year and the run-out--we
have it staked out at that level. That is really to deal with
these emerging launch companies to bring a--first year is a
requirements definition, development of what our mission needs,
safety issues associated with what we are looking for, and
performance, how many pounds of payload we would want to
deliver and the issues of operating and retrieving payloads in
the station. If they can meet those requirements, that more
than meets requirements for commercial payloads going below
earth orbit or beyond. What we want to do is select about five
or six companies competitively to do these first rounds of
system trades for us in the first year. Like I said, we are
going to have a workshop 2 months from now to bring those
companies in, down to Huntsville, to start this process with
them. After about a year of study, we would further refine
those technology-driven road maps, those mission requirements,
that would in effect lay out a procurement launch service
operation.
Mr. Cramer. Forgive me for interupting, but my time is
almost finished. Will there be a competition every year?
Mr. Venneri. Yes. There would be a competition in year----
Mr. Cramer. Would this consist of multiple phases?
Mr. Venneri. One phase to be followed by competition for
launch services which we could integrate within our existing
launch contracts we have or contracts that do not exist or to
provide service to us. So it opens many avenues of people doing
business with us. It does not preclude new launch companies
that do not have existing business or contract relationships
with NASA today.
Mr. Goldin. By the way, it is not just emerging launch
companies.
Mr. Cramer. Does it include small to mid-sized launch
companies?
Mr. Venneri. It could be all the way from emerging to delta
to any of the existing launch services today.
Mr. Cramer. Mr. Chairman, thank you for indulging me. Thank
you, Mr. Goldin.
Mr. Frelinghuysen. Thank you, Mr. Cramer.
Mr. Knollenberg.
faster, better, cheaper
Mr. Knollenberg. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Goldin, welcome, and gentlemen.
I know this is probably a little bit overdone, and you have
been facing the music for a long time, but let me allow you to
face it again. The tune will be the same pretty much, but I am
looking for a couple of areas of information here.
The faster, better, cheaper thing, I think as the chairman
noted in his opening remarks, suggests that it may be faster
and cheaper, but it is not better. I think that is a tone that
is reflective of what we see. We only know what we see.
The Post has termed this ``Another avoidable mistake for
NASA,'' avoidable mistake, about lapses in management, about
four spacecraft. I understand two, but they have got four in
their column, including the piggy-back apparently on the two at
a cost of some $360 million.
The claim that the agency just simply neglected
fundamentals, this is not just the Young Report that the Post
is reflecting coming from other sources as well.
I want to address you directly on this. You and I know each
other, and we get along. We have a respect, I think, for each
other, but what bothers me about this particular problem is the
one specific that has to do with the failure to convert English
to the metric units. It seems to me that is kind of--the
analogy might be to tune a race car in every respect except the
failure to tighten the lug nuts, which is a very, very first
step in anything.
Here you have this magnificent extraordinary spacecraft,
this device, that seems to do everything right except somebody
did not do a very, very basic thing. To me, as an outsider
looking in, and it is reflective of the views of a whole lot of
people I have talked to, it is like who blew it? Who really
blew it? That to me suggests--and you could say, ``Well, they
are young kids.'' They are, some of them. And the JPL team, for
example, had 10 people working 80-hour weeks. Maybe they were
overstressed. I do not know, but can you just go
straightforward eyeball to eyeball with me on this and tell me
how do you stop this from happening in the future?
Mr. Goldin. First, let me----
Mr. Knollenberg. Did not stop it here. So how do we stop it
in the future, and why was this very thing overlooked?
Mr. Goldin. First, let me say--this will sound funny--we
will not stop it. This is the space business, and I will point
out to you some----
Mr. Knollenberg. You will not stop what?
Mr. Goldin. We will have problems. We will have other
problems, but let me point out that some 20, 30 years ago, we
sent a spacecraft, I think it was, to the moon or to Mars, and
the software did not have a dash in it, just a little dash, and
the mission failed. This is how life is. In our individual
lives, we go through and we make mistakes all the time. When we
have----
Mr. Knollenberg. This is a very, very simple matter, I
think.
Mr. Goldin. The problem I wanted to get to, it is not the
fact that someone made an error in the transposition of terms.
The problem was the system was intolerant of that failure, and
one of the things we have to do is have systems that are
tolerant of failure because we have humans that do software
coding.
Mr. Knollenberg. Intolerant?
Mr. Goldin. The system was not tolerant of a failure. That
was the problem, because failures occur all the time and we
catch them because the system is tolerant of failures and to
individual failures at the system level it does not fail. So it
was not the error coding that was the problem. It was the
breakdown of the review process, of the process of doing the
job, not that individual element. That is the area that Mr.
Keegan is going to be working on to see how we build more
error-tolerant systems.
Mr. Knollenberg. So you can do something about that----
Mr. Goldin. Oh, yes.
Mr. Knollenberg [continuing]. To oversight it to make sure
it does not happen again.
Mr. Goldin. What I was saying is, you get individual
errors, but you want to build a system that is more tolerant to
an error so at the system level if a little error occurs in the
bottom base of the system, the overall system does not fail.
We will be able to do that to a degree, but I want to look
at you and say--and I think this is difficult and I had a hard
time getting it across--we are going to crash other spacecraft.
We will have problems with other spacecraft. We will have dumb
problems because that is the very nature of this business.
Mr. Knollenberg. I know it is difficult frankly for you to
see this happen. It is your shoulders. It is difficult for us
obviously to confront you with what is our oversight
responsibility, but frankly we have to do that and I do have
concerns about--I still have a problem with this one little
glitch which I would hope that Mr.--Keegan, is it?
Mr. Keegan. Yes.
Mr. Knollenberg [continuing]. There is a way to avoid that.
I can understand why something would go wrong that was of a
highly technical nature, and maybe you cannot even find out
what went wrong until the very end, but when it comes to the
lug nuts or this kind of thing--and I recognize you have an
explanation for that--it defies, I think, the proper oversight
that should be there to avoid this kind of thing.
Again, I am just quoting the avoidable mistake.
Mr. Goldin. I want to come back and say it is very
important. I have worked on--we lost a Mars Observer that was
$800 million. We had a spherical aberration in the Hubble
telescope with all the experienced people and all the
oversight. In fact, we had people who watch people who watch
people. We still had a problem.
This is something that has to be tolerated, but I want to
come to my definition of faster, better, cheaper, and this is
where I started. This is what I am responsible for, and I would
like to just point out a few aspects.
First, a basic issue in faster, better, cheaper is relying
on individual and organizational commitment to responsibility
and accountability of doing it right the first time.
When we go back to incredible oversight, we take away
personal responsibility, and the analogy I give to you is my
father was a teacher, and up until the third grade, he worked
in the post office sorting mail. When he became a teacher, he
started reviewing my compositions, and my grammar and spelling
is terrible to this day because he always corrected it.
One of the things that we have tried to instill in NASA
that these people out of JPL took up and the Lockheed
Martinpeople took up is responsibility and accountability and not
having this oversight.
In the private sector, you get thrown out if you had all
the oversight that we have in the Government, but the American
people expect us to work to a higher level. We can and we will,
but we cannot work to a high level if we say don't you dare
fail because I will guarantee you success, but what will happen
when we tell people don't you dare fail because we cannot
explain it to the American people, we will set such mediocre
goals and we will go back in the other direction over there.
global climate change
Mr. Knollenberg. I am not suggesting that you have to
modify that to a point of being ridiculous in the overlays of
defensive measures to counteract success, in fact to prevent
success. I am not suggesting that at all. It just seems to me
that this is one of those examples that is so simple. Why in
the world didn't somebody notice that the lug nuts were not
tight?
I understand to a point what you are saying, but I have a
little problem with your explanation because it still looks
away for what should have been obvious to somebody with an eye.
You are going to have to help me some other time on this
because my time is running out. My only other question I would
have for you, and this is going to be very, very brief, is
there are three scientists that you have contributed--I beg
your pardon--that have secured funding from NASA, and this has
to do with the national assessment or the climate variability
and climate change issue. These three researchers who do
receive this funding are Sally Baliunas, John Christy, and Roy
Spencer. What is NASA doing to ensure that their science is
presented in the national assessment in some balanced form?
Mr. Goldin. First, the fact that we are funding these three
people who disagree with some of the broader inter-governmental
committee perspectives is a statement in and of itself.
Mr. Knollenberg. I agree.
Mr. Goldin. We at NASA want open peer-reviewed science. We
want to have the free flow of science with people on both sides
of the issues. So we run open competitions, and we want to
encourage both sides of the argument because it strengthens us
and makes us better.
When we selected the Young panel, we did not pick people
that are going to be easy on us. We selected people that would
dig in and they did their job so we would be that way, but we
are absolutely committed to wide-open peer-reviewed research,
with people that argued in the court of the intellect.
Mr. Knollenberg. I do appreciate that answer, and I think
that is an approach that I would see as being very honest and
very honorable because that is the only way I think you can get
there to present a balanced case.
Mr. Goldin. If you are here for the next round, I would
appreciate coming back to that issue because you are still not
satisfied, and there are some points I would like to make that
may get you there.
Mr. Knollenberg. I will try to be back, but I have a couple
of commitments. But we can still do that later. Thank you.
Mr. Goldin. Okay. It will be my pleasure.
international space station
Mr. Frelinghuysen. Thank you, Mr. Knollenberg.
I have a few questions that relate to the International
Space Station.
The chairman mentioned in his opening remarks, and I quote,
the ``on-again/off-again assembly of the International Space
Station that has been put on hold for a year and a half.'' I
was wondering, Mr. Goldin, were you aware that the Russians
were going to be docking with the Mir as they did this morning?
Mr. Goldin. I was painfully aware.
Mr. Frelinghuysen. You have given us a sense of your
frustration. I assume that you were as aghast as some of us
were that they would describe, as the chairman has in his
statement, that this would be, perhaps in their own words,
``the beginning of a new lease on life'' for that particular
laboratory?
Mr. Goldin. I do not know whether it is a new lease on
life. I do not know what they intend to do. What I do know is
what I stated before. If one nickel of Russian government money
is going to the Mir program to keep it up in the sky and that
one nickel is not being invested in the International Space
Station, I have a major problem. It is not for the NASA
Administrator to tell a sovereign country how to conduct their
independent business, but it is for the NASA Administrator to
say to a sovereign nation, if you sign an international
agreement at the highest levels of government, you must pay the
bills, and if you cannot, you face up to it and do not put the
money in a different place. That is my problem.
Mr. Frelinghuysen. The chairman also had in his opening
remarks, and I quote, ``This week's mission to reawaken Mir
used the Progress and Soyuz vehicles, the United States paid
for and were originally dedicated to the International Space
Station.'' Is that accurate?
Mr. Goldin. That is not accurate. What we did is we bought,
I believe it was, 4,000 hours of crew time that the Russians
had for the international agreement on the initial phases of
the build-up of the space station. That is what the money paid
for.
We did that to encourage the Russians to keep on track, but
we got value-added for the money that we paid. We said that we
would make milestone payments based upon what progress you make
on Soyuz and Progress vehicles, but we did not pay for those
vehicles, and that was a misconception.
Mr. Frelinghuysen. So none of our time and money was----
Mr. Goldin. Our taxpayer money did not pay for vehicles
that went to the Mir Space Station.
service module launch
Mr. Frelinghuysen. The question was posed this morning, if
Russia fails to launch the service module this summer, NASA
must be prepared to fly the interim control module in December
and accelerate the design of construction of the U.S.
propulsion module.
Mr. Goldin. We are prepared to do that. We have one little
itty-bitty problem. We wanted to buy two pieces of hardware
from the Russians. One piece of hardware would allow us to dock
the interim control module with what is called the Zarya
module, and we wanted to have some other equipment that would
help us dock the propulsion module with the space station. That
is $14 million. If we would have built that equipment in this
country, it would cost a lot more, and in some cases, we could
not even build it because it is integral with some of the
Russian equipment. The only thing that is holding us up right
now is weabide by the law. 1883 was passed by the House and the
Senate and the President signed it. So we have to live within the
letter of the law of that congressional mandate. So we are at the
present time working that through, and as soon as we could place that
purchase order, I could look you in the eye and say in December we will
be able to launch the interim control module.
We will be having a Delta PDR on the propulsion module
sometime in May or June of this year, and at that time, we will
be able to take a good hard look at the schedule for the
propulsion module and see how we could accelerate it.
russia's contributions
Mr. Frelinghuysen. What have the Russians contributed to
date to the International Space Station?
Mr. Goldin. They have built a significant amount of
hardware. They have been performing the mission control
function out of the center in Moscow. They have been incredibly
open with us. They have launched----
Mr. Frelinghuysen. Out of your budget, we have given you
approximately $2 billion each and every year, haven't we?
Mr. Goldin. Yes. I cannot translate rubles into dollars
with all the way business gets done in Russia, but they are
building, I believe, hardware equivalent to 50 percent by
weight and also of the same level of complexity of the hardware
we are doing. They have built some very, very good hardware. We
have been following it. The service module looks like a high-
quality piece of hardware.
Mr. Frelinghuysen. So there is no way to monetarize, if
that is the proper term, to figure out how much they have
actually contributed in terms of rubles or dollars and cents?
Mr. Goldin. I do not know how to convert that.
It is an amazing thing to see how when we convert rubles
into dollars and then take a look at the number of hours that
they get out of their employees how to make that one-for-one
connection. We have tried real hard. We do not know how to do
that, but they have thousands of people working.
Mr. Frelinghuysen. They certainly do. They have a lot of
unemployment, that and a variety of other errors in Russia, but
I assume there must be some way to get a dollar ball-park
figure.
Mr. Goldin. We have tried. In response to that question, we
will try once more and get back to you. By the way, I might
point out they have a whole series of Progress and Soyuz
vehicles in the construction phase right now for the
International Space Station to be launched later this year.
operational cost of space station
Mr. Frelinghuysen. Last year, we discussed the space
station--operating costs of the space station. Subsequently, I
understand that NASA and the GAO differed on the cost to
operate the International Space Station. As might be expected,
the GAO estimate was higher as it included more items and
reached further into the future.
Have you and GAO reached a meeting of the minds?
Mr. Goldin. Joe, could you answer that?
Mr. Rothenberg. Certainly. The one area where the GAO and
us really do not differ--it is just that we have not gone
through and completed what we are calling an operations
review--and we have right now a committee in place under the
chairmanship of Dr. John Cox, made up of a number of external
people, who are looking at what the post-assembly operations,
logistics, and what the costs really are going to be. We are
operating on an estimate that was put in place about 5 years
ago. Now we want to look at it in actuality.
What the GAO points out is we have not defined or
incorporated the costs of operations for the propulsion module
yet, the CRV, and our long-term operations budget. We agree
with that. We just want to be on firm ground when we update our
estimates.
Mr. Frelinghuysen. So there is no operational cost
estimate?
Mr. Rothenberg. There is operational cost estimates in the
budget today of about $1.5 billion a year.
Mr. Frelinghuysen. How does that compare to the past 2
years?
Mr. Rothenberg. Well, these operations costs----
Mr. Frelinghuysen. Last year to this year?
Mr. Rothenberg. Well, the costs last year to this year are
far less, and the reason is that at this point we are not doing
research onboard the station. We are doing development in
parallel with the operations of just the two simple modules we
have up there. Therefore, the cost of operating it is far less.
The cost of resupplying it and logistics to it are far less
than it will be in the future.
However, the other point is that the development work force
today is supporting operations also as part of the development
activity. In the future, the focus will be 80 to 90 percent, if
not all, of the work force on operations, and at that point,
between that, the spare parts logistics, the cost to operate
the CRV, maintain the CRV, the propulsion module, those total
costs right now are targeted to be somewhere within the 1.5-
billion number. However, that estimate was put together 5 years
ago, and we have not taken a look at it seriously.
This year, for the first time, we are looking at that now
that we see the first pieces are up there and we are getting an
experience base to start from.
Mr. Frelinghuysen. So we are taking it seriously now
because the assembly is moving ahead?
Mr. Rothenberg. We have always taken it seriously. The
difficulty is it is easy to estimate cost when you have no
experience base to go from or you do not know what all the
pieces are. It has become much more difficult to estimate the
cost because you want to get them correct. They are much more
important. Let me put it that way, to estimate the cost more
precisely now that we know the completion, approximate
completion times. We know the complement of hardware we will
have on orbit, a propulsion module, a CRV. We did not know that
5 years ago, and so those estimates were early estimates, and
all we want to do is make sure that as we go over them next
year, we understand all of the pieces and include all of the
pieces and not have an estimate that does not cover all the
pieces we need to fully operate it.
Mr. Frelinghuysen. How much is the cost of operation? How
much of the costs are reduced by international participation
which, of course, is one of the original selling points?
Mr. Rothenberg. I do not have a number of how much the
offsets----
Mr. Frelinghuysen. We certainly do not have a number for
the Russians, but who are the other participants?
Mr. Rothenberg. The Japanese, the Italians, and the
Brazilians. I can get a number. I just do not have the number
of what that----
Mr. Goldin. The number for the other countries is something
on the order of $9 billion, exclusive of the Russians.
Mr. Frelinghuysen. If we can get a breakdown----
Mr. Goldin. Oh, no. I gave you the wrong number.
Mr. Rothenberg. Right.
Mr. Goldin. I gave you the development cost.
Mr. Rothenberg. Right.
Mr. Goldin. I stand corrected.
Mr. Rothenberg. He was asking the operations cost.
I just do not have the number off the top of my head put
together like that. There are costs. We will not know the cost
of the number, but the contributions we expect out of the
Russians with the Progress and resupply vehicle are important
and the Soyuz to deliver crew are important elements of the
program.
[The information follows:]
The estimate for ISS operations, made in 1994, is
approximately $1.3 billion per year, averaged over the expected
ten-year operational life of the ISS. This includes an average
of $300 million for research utilization and $1 billion for
other operations. A new review, focused on the post-assembly
complete operational costs, is being conducted as part of the
FY 2002 budget formulation process. This estimate for
operations and research utilization will also include civil
service costs, consistent with the Agency's full cost approach.
Shuttle operations and other launch vehicle support to the ISS
are estimated and budgeted separately.
The operational costs for the Russian Elements on the ISS
are covered completely by Russia. The operational costs for the
non-Russian elements of the ISS, excluding Shuttle and other
launch vehicle support to the ISS, are estimated at $1.3
billion average per year. Approximately $300 million of this
cost is identified as ``common system operations'' and is
applicable to the sharing agreement between the International
Partners and NASA. The remaining $1 billion is unique to NASA.
The agreement states that the International Partners will cover
23% of the $300 million common cost, or less than $100 million.
This percentage is proportional to their share of resources
from the non-Russian side of the station. It is anticipated
that most of the International Partners' responsibilities will
be covered through the delivery of resupply to the station
including propellant from ESA and other logistics from Japan,
each using their own launch systems.
crew transfer vehicle
Mr. Frelinghuysen. Can we assume that NASA is using the
delay in completing the International Space Station to
reevaluate its plan to provide future space station crews with
a mean of scale? Currently, as I understand it, there are two
ways to get a crew back to earth. One is a U.S. fleet of four
space shuttles. Is that right? The second is the Russian-built
Soyuz spacecraft.
One approach, as I understand it, a billion-dollar plan to
build a small fleet of one-way CTVs. The other is to spend a
modestly larger investment to build a space shuttle back up
with the ability to put astronauts in space called CTVs. Is
that correct?
Mr. Rothenberg. CTV.
Mr. Frelinghuysen. CTV?
Mr. Goldin. Crew transfer vehicle.
Mr. Rothenberg. Crew transfer vehicle.
Mr. Frelinghuysen. What are the pros and cons and costs of
each approach?
Mr. Rothenberg. Right now, where we are is we have an X38
program which has demonstrated technology that could lead to a
crew return vehicle. The current estimate we are carrying is
about a billion dollars to provide four vehicles to support the
space station.
We have been asked by the Administrator to look at
alternatives to that, that might look at for incremental costs
over what we are spending now for a crew return vehicle to
develop a crew transfer vehicle, and I will talk about how we
are doing that in a minute, to develop a crew transfer vehicle
which will provide two-way services and serve the crew return
function.
Where we are right now is as part of the integrated space
transportation study, we have incorporated in this next phase
of that a request to the contractors to propose alternative
approaches to satisfying the crew return vehicle, the crew
return function, by looking at the crew transfer vehicle as a
two-way vehicle and provide the crew return function.
My main concern about that if it adds several years to the
program or costs above and beyond what we are expecting today,
we will be adding risk to the program or dependence on the
Russians for far longer than we would like to. However, we will
not know where we are until the results of these studies are
in, and our intent is to have these studies and to make the
decision before we proceed with full-scale development of----
Mr. Frelinghuysen. What is your time table, the bottom line
being how and when will NASA decide what approach best meets
its transportation needs and the safety?
Mr. Rothenberg. We are developing the crew return vehicle.
The crew return vehicle, we are about to enter in this coming
fall in a phase-one study. It is a phase-one activity which is
development of the design to the point where we fully
understand the cost and fully understand the functionality of
it.
At the same time in parallel are these advanced
transportation studies that are looking at the crew transfer
vehicle. The phase that we are looking at will be about 18
months from the start of contract which will be October 1st,
from that time before we initiate the second phase, which is
the development of the full-scale vehicle. So over the next 18
months or 18 months from October is when we hope to resolve
that question.
Mr. Frelinghuysen. Mr. Mollohan.
integrated financial management system
Mr. Mollohan. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
What is the status of your integrated financial management
system?
Mr. Goldin. Arnold? Could we have the chief financial
officer, please?
Mr. Mollohan. Whoever is to implement it.
Well, you had your name tag already. It would have been a
shame if you had not been called to answer some questions.
Mr. Holz. Well, he said that is what it was for.
The status of the Integrated Financial Management System,
on January the 10th, NASA issued a cure notice or a show-cause
notice to KPMG alerting the firm that the system they delivered
to NASA to support its IFMP did not meet the Government
requirements as outlined in the contract.
The notice required KPMG to provide any facts that they
could regarding whether their failure to perform arose from
causes beyond their control. KPMG was provided a 10-calendar-
day period during which they were required to either cure the
problems or provide assurances that they could. The date was
extended, and KPMG's response was provided to NASA on January
28th, 2000. On March the 10th, theparties agreed to cease
performance on the contract. NASA is pursuing alternatives for
achieving the goals of the program. However, the alternative courses of
action may include fulfilling the program requirements without the
support of KPMG. Until the course of action is outlined, it is
premature for us to lay that out before you at this precise moment.
Mr. Mollohan. This is a second effort to stand up this
system, isn't it?
Mr. Holz. It is a second effort, but the approaches were
different. I do not know exactly the year NASA took its first
steps, but there was a system called NAFIS which was strictly
an accounting system. It did not integrate with the other
business processes, a little narrower definition of the
requirements, and it was accounting only and it was an in-house
development effort which was ground-up design, writing program
code and what have you. After a substantial investment, it was
clear they were not anywhere near reaching the goals and it was
way off target.
Mr. Mollohan. What went wrong----
Mr. Holz. We determined that this--I beg your pardon.
Mr. Mollohan. No, I'm sorry.
Mr. Holz. The second effort, the one that we are now
involved in was different in that our approach was to contract
with a firm to deliver a fully integrated COTS-type products
that would enable us to do all our business processing, but
that did not happen.
Mr. Mollohan. How long has KPMG been working on it?
Mr. Holz. 1997 is when we started the contract, and----
Mr. Mollohan. How much money have they been paid?
Mr. Holz. They have been paid approximately $10 million for
a couple of things they actually did deliver, but it was not
the software. It was some business process flow charts,
transactional flow-type things, and an early budget module that
we are currently using. It is an isolated piece that will feed
the accounting system, and that early budget module is in place
and we are currently using that.
Mr. Mollohan. Where do you go from here?
Mr. Holz. Well----
Mr. Mollohan. You are addressing this question in part of
your budget request?
Mr. Holz. Yes, we are, and the costs are a little too early
to find on the alternative approach yet, but we are diligently
working away at that and that will work into our budget process
and will work through the month of July as we begin to assemble
the agency budget process. We currently have some funds
available to continue the effort.
Mr. Mollohan. What does that mean? What are you going to
do?
Mr. Holz. Well, when I say continue the effort, we are
going to move forward with an alternative plan, and the work on
that can begin as we prepare the out-year budgets for the
remainder of the program.
full-cost accounting
Mr. Mollohan. Are you under a time constraint to get this
full-cost accounting capability in place?
Mr. Holz. I think the time constraint on that is the agency
has indicated very much a desire to and the accounting
standards require to a certain extent to implement full-cost
accounting, and we are going to take a phased approach using
existing systems which are not as timely and efficient as an
integrated approach would be, but we are going to use that
initially. The time constraint on this, I think, is one we can
internally determine and control ourselves. We are not on an
externally mandated deadline. It is all part of our plan and
how we are going to implement and roll this out, and it is one
in which I think we can control those dates.
Mr. Mollohan. Have you thought through this enough since
you have taken this action with KPMG to have an estimation of
when you will have this system in place?
Mr. Holz. I would love to give you that information. The
plans are in an early stage of development, and I think it
would be bad for me to do that right now. One of the things we
want to make sure of is that as we proceed, we want to make
sure that we have a system that will work, and we are going to
follow a process of proving it before we establish expectations
which may not be met. So we want to make sure we can deliver on
promises. It is a little premature at this time to give that
information.
kpmg non-performance
Mr. Mollohan. Just curious. Has KPMG been paid for
nonperformance in your estimate?
Mr. Holz. Oh, I can factually state that they have only
been paid for things that they have actually delivered. This
was mostly a fixed-price firm delivery contract, and they have
not been paid for work they have not performed.
propulsion module
Mr. Mollohan. Thank you.
Why has the cost of the Propulsion Module increased so much
over so little time, and do you need two of them?
Mr. Goldin. Joe?
Mr. Rothenberg. On the FY00 budget, which was the first
time we put that into the budget was generated--we had at that
point just completed the systems requirements review which we
laid out the full set of requirements on the propulsion module.
At that time, we took the best estimates from the contractor,
the Boeing company as well as our own in-house and non-prime
costs and factored that with some reserves and put it into the
budget.
Subsequent to that, we went through to what the first stage
of a preliminary design review--which got us through last
December, and we used that input for the 2001 budget process.
In that, we identified a number of integration costs with the
shuttle that were not included in the initial set of budget
inputs from the consideration.
At this stage, in fact, until we complete the PDR in May or
June, I am not sure we fully understand the cost of the
propulsion module. So we have to watch that carefully.
Mr. Mollohan. You mean yet?
Mr. Rothenberg. Yes.
Mr. Mollohan. Do you need a second propulsion module?
Mr. Rothenberg. I think it would be highly desirable.
However, when they started down this path, it was an awful lot
of single-stream redundancy in the system, and that is part of
what went into the increase in cost that significantly has
increased the reliability on lifetime of the single propulsion
module. We still need to revisit whether we need a second
propulsion module, and we have not come to terms with that yet,
but the increase in redundancy and reliability offset some of
the risk of not having it at the initial start.
Mr. Mollohan. So you do not have a good cost number yet?
Mr. Rothenberg. I do not believe we do.
shuttle flights
Mr. Mollohan. How many shuttle flights in Fiscal Year 2000
were assumed in the 2001 budget request?
Mr. Goldin. Joe?
Mr. Rothenberg. There were six shuttle flights in the year
2000 assumed and the 2001----
Mr. Mollohan. I'm sorry?
Mr. Rothenberg. There were six flights in the fiscal year
2000 budget. In the FY 2001 budget request, currently there are
five actually planned within that budget.
Mr. Mollohan. You have dropped one.
Mr. Rothenberg. Yes, that is correct.
shuttle upgrades and new hires
Mr. Mollohan. You know the House passed a supplemental
appropriations bill which includes $26 million for shuttle
upgrades and $20 million for new hires. Should that funding not
be provided, which is a possibility, why would it not be
possible to use funds freed up as a result of this dropped
flight?
Mr. Rothenberg. The algorithm----
Mr. Mollohan. You cover the $40 million NASA is seeking for
shuttle upgrades and new hires, rather than using the $40
million that Congress directed for the research mission funding
in December 2001.
Mr. Rothenberg. Unfortunately, the way the process works is
that the hardware we need for the flights this year is bought
in the preceding 3 years and paid for in the preceding--so what
we have effectively done is deferred some launches into next
year, and obviously there is a ripple effect that defers it
into the following year, such that in the year of the budget,
the year of the delegation, you only save about $16 million.
The second point is we recognize that when we put together
our budget each year that things like that happen, and one of
the first places that we suffer with that recognition is in the
reserves.
Our reserves are less than 3 percent for the whole program,
and the slip accommodates us and provides us with about $16
million of additional reserve to deal with things like extra
work because of the wiring problems we have had, things like
the ongoing alternate turbo pump development which we hope to
have flying this year. Principally, that $16 million is what we
count on to use towards our reserves.
eosdis status
Mr. Mollohan. Thank you.
Can you provide us a status report regarding EOSDIS? I
understand there have been some issues with the program,
including a renegotiation of the contract.
Dr. Asrar. Yes, sir. Good afternoon.
Mr. Mollohan. Could you identify and explain the problem?
Dr. Asrar. Yes. Basically, EOSDIS on technical grounds has
been very successful, and it is functioning. It is delivering
all the services and products that it was intended to in
support of the four successful launches that we have had in the
past year. It is currently supporting the full capacity, the
operation, archive, and distribution of land-site data. It is
currently supporting the operation and data processing and
handling of the Terra spacecraft, and also the ACRIMSAT which
was a small satellite. As of late, we also completed the
Shuttle Radar Topography Mission.
So, on the technical grounds, there are no issues in
EOSDIS. However, as you stated, we had to renegotiate the
contract because the initial contract was established back when
EOS was started. Then we had only two major spacecraft. Since
then, the number of spacecraft in EOS has grown to more than
20. The structure of the contract really fundamentally changed
because of the type of services and the type of missions that
they had to support.
So we successfully renegotiated the contract, and the total
value of the contract currently is $957 million. The total
growth in the contract value from its initial phase to the
current is about $88 million, which includes added scope to
accommodate new capabilities that we are requiring for support
of the new missions or the added missions that I talked about.
However, there is also some growth on the year-to-date cost
overrun and, of course, the delay which was caused by not
having the flight operating system----
Mr. Mollohan. Not having what?
Dr. Asrar. Not having the flight operating system, FOS, to
support the Terra spacecraft. So it is a combination of
basically cost growth and added scope to accommodate the new
requirements which were options on the contract, the initial
contract.
In addition, we also had to give up some requirements to
fit the total contract within the envelope that we have. All in
all, the current value of the contract is below the initial
estimates that were negotiated with the contractor.
So, in sum, we believe we have a very good arrangement with
the contractor to accommodate all of our requirements, albeit
if we gave up some requirements to fit it in the budgetary
envelope.
Mr. Mollohan. You gave up requirements.
Dr. Asrar. We did, yes. We faced some of the requirements.
We gave up some of the requirements as well as, as I stated,
including new high-priority requirements and----
Mr. Mollohan. And the contractor got $88 million more.
Dr. Asrar. Which is a combination of--again, recalling
that, initially it was supposed to support only two spacecraft.
In the current arrangement, we are having roughly about more
than 20 spacecraft that are going to be operated and managed.
We also came up with some innovative methods of handling
some of the functions that the initial contractor had to
accommodate. For example, the processing of the data was
supposed to be handled by the contractor, and we provided that
as an option to the principal investigators who had the
facilities and the expertise. We allowed them to bid on that
activity, and that helped us to reduce the cost of those
activities significantly.
The only remaining issue at the moment is that within the
current fiscal year and the next fiscal year, the total amount
required to basically fulfill all the tasks that we have
identified, there is a shortfall of about--there was a
shortfall of about $36 million this year which we have managed
to reduce it substantially to half that amount within the
program, and there is about a $12-million shortfall next year.
So that is basically the status of the EOSDIS.
On the technical ground, it is really sound. Just on the
budgetary front, we have some challenges that we have been
trying to work out within existing budget for this year andnext
fiscal year.
Mr. Mollohan. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Walsh [presiding]. You are welcome.
Mr. Hobson.
Representative Hobson's Remarks
Mr. Hobson. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
First, let me say I just want to thank you for your
collaborative efforts with DOD, and working with NASA, Glenn,
and Wright-Patterson. I think that it is a good synergy, and it
is a good commitment for both of you to make. I think you can
help each other. I want to thank you for that, and I know that
you plan to continue that and I appreciate it.
You might be interested in that last night I spoke to a
class at George Washington University. We talked about the
Government and people in Government and people who run federal
agencies.
Somebody asked about some of the problems with NASA and
some of the missions. I said I think you have brought the best
of the private sector to this agency, and I think you had
really taken over programs that had struggled somewhat. You
have tried to bring to it a good private sector management and
that you were looking at the Mars program. One of testimonies
you had given before is you had been maybe a little too strong
in some ways and needed to let it breathe a little bit, but
that is all management. So I pointed out to them that I thought
you were probably the premier administrator of all the agencies
we talk to. So, if you hear anything back from those kids, I
hope they get something out of it, and I hope NASA gets----
Mr. Goldin. It is good to hear some good news in the last 3
weeks. [Laughter.]
ultra-efficient engine technology
Mr. Hobson. Running these agencies, it looks a lot easier
from the outside than it is in the inside. Some of us who run
businesses before can understand that a little bit.
I want to talk about a couple of things that I might have
some concerns about. I am concerned about the Ultra-Efficient
Engine Technology Program and aeronautics. I want to make sure
that we keep the first ``A'' in NASA as a priority. I was
pleased to see substantial resources committed to aeronautic
activities in your '01 budget request which will make our
planes safer, our skies quieter, and our atmosphere cleaner.
One of the key programs is the Ultra-Efficient Engine
Technology Program. You requested $35 million for the UEET
program compared to $68 million which was appropriated for UEET
in '00. This decrease is 48 percent. I would like you to
explain the decrease in the program which I think you referred
to as ``a high national priority'' in your budget
justification. Would you like to respond to that?
Mr. Goldin. Yes. I would ask Sam Venneri to respond.
Mr. Hobson. This guy from the end, I understand, is the
right guy.
Mr. Venneri. The $68 million that was in the congressional
budget, what we did--and this is not sleight of hand. It is
really recognition of aero propulsion. It should be worked with
the airframe. The money was actually reduced down to 55, and of
that amount----
Mr. Hobson. And not 35?
Mr. Venneri. It was 55, and the 35 came from us breaking it
into two pieces. One is the UEET efficient program. The other
one was $20 million that we put under the quiet aircraft
technology. The quiet aircraft technology was actually a $20-
million earmark in 2000. This is probably the only time you are
going to hear me say earmarks are a good thing because that
earmark was actually the right program. We are continuing that
$20 million into 2001 and 2002. That $20 million, though,
breaks down to mostly at Glenn. $15 million of that 20 under
quiet aircraft program is really at Glenn Research Center. So
you really have to look at the 35 that you are referring to
under the ultra-efficient engine and the noise activity
associated with propulsion is under the quiet aircraft program.
The reason we are doing that is that the engine and airframe
itself together represents the technology thrust that we have
to solve. When we talked to you a few months ago, I told you we
were going to try to bring the airframers and engine companies
together. The Glenn people moved out at light speed. We have
contracts in place now with General Electric, Pratt & Whitney,
and Boeing looking at this integrated problem as one team.
We are looking at generic airplanes. We are not picking a
777 or a Boeing proprietary design, but we do have an industry
team and a Glenn-Langley team addressing the total integrated
package of advanced propulsion into advanced airframe concepts.
So, really, if you wanted to say how much is down at Glenn, it
is more like $5 million.
Mr. Hobson. I want to ask it a little deeper than that. Are
you committed to the UEET program? Is it the right program? Is
it the wrong program? What is your overall commitment? I am
talking about the UEET part now.
Mr. Venneri. Your statement about propulsion being critical
is absolutely right on. What we are working with Glenn now on,
in addition to what I have described in terms of this industry
team which brings the airframe business in, is working with
them and establishing a long-term core competency strategy in
aeropropulsion at Glenn and more importantly a program baseline
that brings the engine companies in with us as a partner.
We had that in place when we had adequate funding at Glenn
under what was kept under the high-speed research program which
went away. What we are in the process of doing now is
recovering those critical technology areas that are absolutely
crucial for the aeropropulsion industry and our research at
Glenn to move forward. That is being done over the next few
months this summer. So we are really looking at this not as a
2001 problem, but really as part of our structured 2002 budget
structure that we are pulling together now. So the simple
answer is we are absolutely committed to support this area
correctly in the Nation.
Mr. Hobson. Can I ask a couple more questions?
Mr. Walsh. Yes.
reusable launch vehicles
Mr. Hobson. I want to talk a little bit about reusable
launch vehicles, that same guy. [Laughter.]
Mr. Hobson. If we look at the aerospace technologyrequest
for 2001 and the outlook for the next 5 years, it is apparent that
aerospace-focussed programs are going to concentrate on second-
generation reusable launch vehicles.
Again, speaking for the Members for Ohio, I guess, and
really across the country as we look at this, how is Glenn
going to fit into the reusable launch vehicle program?
Mr. Venneri. Glenn is on our agency-wide team of looking at
advanced propulsion concepts that go beyond today's rocket
engines. We are looking at the breakthrough areas sometime in
mid to late this century or moving towards alternative cycles.
So Glenn's expertise that is going to be brought to bear in
this is dealing with looking at not just conventional rockets,
but combined cycles where you take the best elements of air-
breathing and combining it with rockets. Also, where we get
into traditional rockets that do not have rotating components,
like air turbo ramjets, we are structuring activities now in
the systems trades that would bring really the expertise from
the aeropropulsion world and bring that into what we are
looking. What we would look at would be the next generation of
rockets beyond today's.
nanotechnology
Mr. Hobson. Let me ask you about that a minute. I heard
some stuff, about nanotechnology--I heard Newt give a speech
the other day, and he was talking about these new technologies
coming in and it is just going to change the types of materials
you have. Nanotechnology is going to have a lot of effect on
the types of materials that you have to make vehicles out of
and to move into space further and not just in medical
research, but in the types of propulsion and things that you
do.
Do you have people looking at this technology?
Mr. Goldin. You bet, and in fact, the Speaker was invited
by us to visit our Ames Research Center----
Mr. Hobson. Yes, he was thrilled.
Mr. Goldin [continuing]. To review that material. We have
in this year's budget a very significant start-up activity in
nanotechnology. Let me help you just a little bit with
nanotechnology. When you build normal materials, you buy them
by the pound and you work on a very large scale. With
nanotechnology, you build it up an atom at a time. So it is
possible to have materials 100 times stronger than steel at
one-sixth the weight if we are successful. The other thing that
is incredibly exciting about nano materials and nano devices is
that if you build it up an atom at a time, you could have super
conductors, semi conductors, thermal conductors, electrical
conductors. You could even integrate nano materials with
proteins and integrate literally biology with the hard physical
world. Now you begin to get into an area when NASA is going to
have an announcement next week with the National Cancer
Institute to seek out micromolecular sensors that hopefully
will have a capacity of probing individual cells, and we would
have nano explorers and nano therapists, if you will, if we are
successful. It is an area----
Mr. Hobson. It is a whole new world.
Mr. Goldin. I would like to make a point that I started on
this morning. I have been incessant in pressing the NASA
employees and the contractors to get more efficient in building
the spacecraft and the products we have in operating them, so
given a tight budget we have money to invest in
nanotechnologies and information technologies and
biotechnologies, because with these three technologies--I call
it the ``golden triangle'' with an ``e-n,'' not an ``i-n,'' but
with these three critical technologies, within a decade we will
just revolutionalize the way we are going. Instead of having
spacecraft that costs $600 million on average or $210 million
on average or $800 million on average, we are looking to put
spacecraft on a chip.
This is a revolution that is going to be important not just
to NASA. This is the reason I have the passion I have. For too
long, NASA spent too much money with too many people, with too
many people who watch people on things that did not get us to
the place that nanotechnology might get us. I apologize if my
passion spills over, but it is very, very important to
understand this issue.
Mr. Hobson. It is a whole new world.
Mr. Goldin. In fact, we are working with Mr. Walsh on a
whole new revolutionary way of spreading information technology
to better educate our engineers.
Mr. Hobson. I thank you. We want to get that in before we
go, but I also just want to thank you for the SEMMA program. It
is working extremely well, with about 270 kids, young kids
getting excited about science in Springfield, Ohio, and I thank
you very much for that program.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Walsh. Hear. Hear.
Mr. Cramer, you will wrap up.
architectural studies
Mr. Cramer. I'd like to get back to what we were talking
about before, including RLVs. I understand that phase three of
the space transportation architecture studies was finished in
December 1999?
Mr. Venneri. We finished those up in December, and we are
about to start.
Mr. Cramer. Can you quickly give me some of the technology
prioritization that resulted from those studies?
Mr. Venneri. In the areas of what we are emphasizing?
Mr. Cramer. Yes.
Mr. Venneri. We looked at requirements that were dealing
with NASA requirements in terms of crew safety, crew escape
systems. We laid out some of the needs in terms of thermal
protection, airframe design, tank design issues, as well as
what would go beyond today's propulsion systems of conventional
rockets today.
We are referring to things that could be combined cycles.
Those things have translated now into road maps that we have
shared with industry which really provides us a baseline of
where we need to go in technology. What also came out of those
studies is the closure of where industry needs to be in terms
of business case models, where their needs would be in terms of
investments, what they need for returns on investment, and we
have some graphs that we could supply to you that explains
where those trade spaces are and what industry views now as
requirements for commercialization of access to space.
second generation RLVs
Mr. Cramer. Thank you, I would like to have those graphs. I
would like to get more information about how you obtained that
information from the industry.
[The information follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Mr. Cramer. After 2005, what role will NASA play in the
commercial development of the second generation RLVs?
Mr. Goldin. That is an open issue. One of the biggest
variables that we are concerned about is how robust will the
commercial space launch industry be in 2005.
There were projections of thousands of commercial launches
when there was a thought that these low-orbiting space systems
will be working. With Iridium failing and problems with ICO,
there has been a concern, and it may just be cyclic.
If there is a very robust commercial market, that will
provide motivation and financial incentive so that these
companies could go out and produce the vehicles without the
Government involvement.
If that is not the case, there will have to be some
significant Government involvement, but we will really hope for
the best.
Now, our goal is to purchase launch services, not rockets.
NASA has been very successful with expendable launch vehicles
and purchasing services, but it all depends on where is the
commercial market going to be at the middle of the first decade
of the century.
shuttle upgrades and new hires
Mr. Cramer. Mr. Goldin, would you talk about the
supplemental bill and what would happen if you do not get the
funding for the shuttle upgrades and the new hires included in
that bill?
I had the benefit of speaking with Dr. Mulville before our
chamber group this week, and we discussed the schedule lags
that could be involved and the damage that would result, but
could you briefly give me your assessment of that?
Mr. Goldin. Joe.
Mr. Rothenberg. Thank you. Yes, the first thing I wanted to
do, and I failed to mention that before, is to thank the
committee for their support in that supplemental. That is very
important. We will have to look for other programs to cut or
other sources of funding. Both of those are very important.
Without a robust work force, we should not take on any new
work, and we need to fix the work force issue. That
supplemental will help that. As far as the shuttle upgrades,
they are also equally important. We cannot continue to fly
people when we know we can remove risk from the vehicle for a
relatively modest investment. So we will have to look for other
sources of funding for that.
Mr. Cramer. What could be the consequences of that? Can you
speculate?
Mr. Goldin. I will jump in. We are hopefully optimistic
that the supplemental will pass, and we are very reluctant to
go off and start thinking about what hypothetically we may cut.
I think the key point here is we are trying with a limited
budget to prioritize, and our number-one priority is safety. We
are committed to adding back some people on the safety issue,
and we are committed to making the shuttle as safe as possible,
and that $25 million is absolutely essential. So we are
committed to investing in those things. We will wait and see
what happens with the supplemental.
Mr. Cramer. It is very important that we preserve that
funding.
Mr. Goldin. And we also appreciate working with this
committee and their tolerance they have with us on this issue.
Mr. Cramer. Mr. Chairman, that is all I have. Thank you.
Mr. Walsh. There is a little bit of time remaining. Mr.
Frelinghuysen had another question he wanted to get in.
Thank you, Mr. Cramer.
mars climate orbiter
Mr. Frelinghuysen. I just had a question on the Mars
Climate Orbiter, its loss. Some people whose opinion I respect
had suggested that the conversion of English to metric should
have been caught earlier because the orbiter had to have three
course corrections during the trip to Mars. Why didn't someone
ask why we had to make these course corrections?
Mr. Goldin. We had a real problem here. We were talking to
Mr. Knollenberg. The error in itself was not as bad as the fact
that we did not have a system that was tolerant to error and
would pull that error out.
We believe that one of the problems that we have to address
is the fact that they did not do independent verification and
validation of the software, and this is a thrust that we are
going to be undertaking.
Mr. Frelinghuysen. What about the course corrections?
Didn't they signal something?
Mr. Goldin. The course corrections, there, there was a real
problem. The navigator was a very mild-mannered fellow, and he
kept pointing out he was seeing problems, but in his
communication with the people in the operations center, he did
not quite get the message across. He would send an e-mail, and
they did not quite understand. There was a real gap in the
knowledge between the two.
The Stevenson panel talked about the fact that there just
was a bad communication problem between good people that did
not communicate well.
mars polar lander
Mr. Frelinghuysen. Lastly, are all the facts out on the
table relative to the loss of the Mars Polar Lander?
Mr. Goldin. Absolutely.
Mr. Frelinghuysen. I have read the letter that went to Dr.
Weiler, and I just wonder if there are more facts to come out.
Obviously, there are a lot of signatories to that letter, but I
just wonder if there are more facts to come out.
Mr. Goldin. I called the chairman of Lockheed Martin and I
asked him to have his people go through the 3 feet of documents
one more--once he told me they went all the way back to 1975.
They did not just stop with this program. They went all the way
back to 1975. We have asked every person we know of to look at
this. We have had what we consider some of best propulsion
people in the country and the best program managers in the
country look at this.
progress/soyuz vehicles
Mr. Frelinghuysen. Lastly, getting back to a reference I
made to the chairman's initial remarks relative to the
Progress, in Soyuz vehicles, weren't they specifically
earmarked for the International Space Station?
Mr. Goldin. Yes, sir.
Mr. Frelinghuysen. To a certain extent, they were used for
other purposes.
Mr. Goldin. Unilaterally, without asking----
Mr. Frelinghuysen. With all due respect, all the money is
fungible, and we do a lot to provide them money for work time,
don't we?
Mr. Goldin. The answer is it was inexcusable. Without
consultation, it was not something a true partner would do, and
there is a high degree of frustration on our side about the
unilateral action taken by the head of the Energia Company to
just move it out.
Mr. Frelinghuysen. Now that they are used, are there
replacements ready to fly? Is this delay such that they will
have additional time to build and provide new ones?
Mr. Goldin. They have an adequate number of Soyuz and
Progress vehicles to cover us for the year 2000.
Mr. Frelinghuysen. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
human space flight program
Mr. Walsh. I will give you the last word. Can you assure us
that the communication problems that you discovered through
this Young report and to the NASA program analysis is not the
problem in the human space flight program?
Mr. Goldin. I believe there is not a communication problem
in the human space flight program. In fact, it is outstanding,
and we have the Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel which is
enabled by the Congress constantly watching over it. I just met
with them, with their annual report, and they feel we have good
communications.
Mr. Walsh. Thank you very much.
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I N D E X
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National Aeronautics and Space Administration
Page
Additional Funding............................................... 122
Administrator Goldin's Closing Remarks........................... 6
Aerospace Technology Enterprise.................................. 109
Aircraft Noise Issues............................................ 107
Alternate Access to Space Station................................ 132
Alternative Access............................................... 108
American Money for Weapons Programs.............................. 50
Applications of Technologies..................................... 91
Architectural Studies..........................................130, 149
Astronaut Team................................................... 49
Biotechnology.................................................... 103
Chairman's Opening Remarks.......................................1, 109
Commercial Launch Services....................................... 88
Component Problems............................................... 40
Contingency Fund................................................. 127
Crew Transfer Vehicle............................................ 140
Cutting Edge Research............................................ 89
De-Orbiting of the MIR........................................... 51
EOSDIS Status.................................................... 144
Faster, Better, Cheaper....................................97, 112, 133
Full-cost Accounting............................................. 142
Funding for the Kennedy Space Center............................. 104
Funds to Russia.................................................. 39
FY 2001 Budget Request...........................................5, 114
Global Climate Change............................................ 135
Goods and Services Purchased from Russia......................... 38
Hiring Versus Investments........................................ 50
Human Space Flight Program....................................... 153
Independent Reviews.............................................. 4
Independent Validation and Verification Facility................. 100
Inspecter General's Top Management Challenges.................... 107
Institutional Memory............................................. 50
Integrated Financial Management System........................... 141
International Partners........................................... 40
International Partners Major Problems............................ 41
International Space Station......................................5, 136
Introduction of NASA Staff....................................... 111
KPMG Non-Performance............................................. 142
Learning from Failures........................................... 98
Lessons Learned.................................................. 4
Living with a Star...............................................44, 92
Major Launch Initiative.......................................... 36
Mars Climate Orbiter............................................. 152
Mars Polar Lander................................................ 152
Mars Program....................................................96, 121
Mars Report...................................................... 112
Mir De-Orbiting.................................................. 128
Nanotechnology................................................... 148
NASA Accomplishments............................................. 3
NASA Budget...................................................... 3, 45
NASA Failures.................................................... 113
NASA Losses...................................................... 3
NASA's Report Card............................................... 113
NASA's Successes and Failures.................................... 35
New Space Launch Initiatives..................................... 6
Operational Cost of Space Station................................ 138
Operational Venture Star......................................... 106
Other Government and Private Sector Applications................. 91
Paying Russia for its Contributions.............................. 38
Payments to Russia............................................... 52
Personnel at NASA................................................ 87
Program Management Working Group................................. 124
Progress/Soyuz Vehicles.......................................... 152
Propulsion Module................................................ 143
Propulsion Research.............................................. 48
Ranking Member's Opening Remarks................................. 2
Regulation of Space Flight....................................... 90
Reinventing NASA................................................. 47
Relationship with Federal Aviation Administration................ 106
Remarks of Representative Meek................................... 102
Remote Sensing Center............................................ 103
Representative Hobson's Remarks.................................. 145
Research and Engineering Processes............................... 94
Reusable Launch Vehicles......................................... 147
Rocket Suppliers................................................. 87
Rocket System Suppliers.......................................... 37
Russia's Contribution............................................ 137
Second Generation RLVs........................................... 149
Service Module.............................................52, 128, 129
Service Module Launch..........................................129, 137
Shuttle Flights.................................................. 143
Shuttle Independent Assessment Team Report....................... 35
Shuttle Upgrades................................................. 104
Shuttle Upgrades and New Hires.................................144, 151
Space Shuttle Independent Assessment Team........................ 49
Space Station Assembly and Operation............................. 37
Space Station Components......................................... 39
Successes and Failures........................................... 41
Terra Launch..................................................... 44
U.S. Global Change Research Program.............................. 42
Ultra-efficient Engine Technology................................ 146
X-33, 34, and 37................................................. 105
Young Report..................................................... 113