[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 126 (Tuesday, August 1, 1995)]
[Senate]
[Pages S11043-S11046]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                    BENEFITS OF NASA-FUNDED RESEARCH

  Mr. GLENN. Mr. President, I rise today to begin a series of 
statements in which I want to outline some of the research and other 
scientific benefits derived from NASA-funded programs. These are 
programs that have benefit, by and large, for every man, woman, and 
child in this country; indeed, for people all over the globe.
  I note with pleasure that just recently, the House passed their 
appropriations bill regarding NASA's space station by a vote of 299 in 
favor and 126 against. That is well over a 2-to-1 margin. I hope we can 
match that in the Senate.
  But every year in the Senate, when the time comes to consider the 
NASA budget, there are those doubters, there are those people who want 
to cut it. I do not want to see excess money going into NASA either, 
but I also think we need to step back once in a while and look at what 
we are talking about with regard to research.
  If there is one thing this Nation should have learned throughout its 
history, it is that money spent on research usually has a way of paying 
off in the future beyond anything we can see at the outset. That is 
just as true with research in space as it is with research that we have 
done in other areas. Research by its very nature is not as amenable to 
cost accounting procedures as are some other programs. But that is why 
it is research: It is looking into the unknown, it is having inquiry 
into things we do not yet know about and do not yet know the value of. 
Yet, that has been at the heart of every bit of advance in science and 
technology that we have ever made as a nation.
  Someone has to wonder, someone has to have a curiosity about what we 
do not know in a certain area, how can we do things better, what would 
happen if we knew the answer to a certain question. And they are 
willing to go out and do something about it. They are willing to 
exercise their wonderment, their curiosity. This Nation is just replete 
with examples of where that has been to our advantage. 

[[Page S11044]]

  For example, we can think back in agriculture and we can see the old 
settlers planting corn. When I was a boy back in New Concord, OH, a 
good corn crop was probably 48 to 50 bushels per acre. That was 
considered pretty good around there in those days. Do you know what it 
was last year not far from where I grew up? There was one farm pointed 
out to me that won the competition in that little part of our State 
near Utica, OH, where our good friend, Gene Branstool, who was in the 
Department of Agriculture for awhile, comes from. That area had 239 
bushels per acre last year on one of the farms--239 bushels per acre.
  Back when I was growing up, the people thought 48 to 50 bushels was 
pretty good. Why do we need research? Why would anybody spend money on 
it when we are getting 48 to 50 bushels off this land, where people 
before had only 30 or 35? But we put money into an agricultural 
research system, and out of that system came improvements in soil and 
fertilizers and hybrids, a tremendous step forward when you got to 
hybrids.
  So the increase in production is not something that indicates farmers 
are working six or seven times as hard as they worked back when I was a 
boy, but it means that we did basic research, even though nobody knew 
what the outcome of it was going to be at that time.
  Out of that research then came improvements in the hybrids, 
machinery, fertilizers, soil stabilization, and all these things that 
give us this wonderful production today that makes us the envy of the 
world. We are not the envy of the world just because--just because--we 
have great plains on which to conduct all of our agriculture. We have 
that agricultural production out there largely because we did basic 
research more than anyone else in the world, and we are the envy of the 
rest of the world with that system that we set up in agriculture.
  I can give other examples. In metals, we develop metals that now give 
more reliable engines, valves, and generators, and all the things that 
go to make up our industrialized society. We did metallurgical research 
that was the envy of the rest of the world. Now there are some places 
in the world, Russia being one of them, where we envy them in some of 
the metallurgical research they are doing. In some areas, we believe 
they are probably ahead of some of our metallurgical research.
  Aeronautical research--why would anybody want to get up and fly like 
the birds? The Wright brothers wondered why not and then did it. That 
first flight they made was 120 feet long and took 12 seconds. Before 
that day was over, they had done four flights, the longest one just a 
little under 900 feet, 59 seconds I believe it was. But they were 
curious about why we could not get up and do sustained flights. People 
have wondered for thousands of years, I suppose, why we could not fly 
like the birds.
  The Wright brothers were curious about it, and they were ridiculed by 
some of the people at the time, because why would anyone want to do 
this? Later on, when they were trying to sell one of the airplanes, or 
a series of them, to the Army to use and were in Washington 
demonstrating it, one of the people in Congress in one of the hearings 
was quoted as saying, ``Why not just buy one airplane and let them take 
turns using it?''
  Well, it shows how myopic the view is of some people. The airplane 
was developed in part because we did basic research. Out of that start 
came an aeronautical industry that, in turn, had its own research done. 
The Government invested in wind tunnels and conducted lift experiments 
and drag experiments and metallurgical experiments along with some of 
that to see what would hold up in a wind tunnel. Out of that came the 
lifting bodies and the aerodynamic surfaces that were the basis of our 
whole aeronautical industry and helped develop such giants as Boeing, 
Lockheed, Grumman, Northrop, McDonnell-Douglas, and all the rest of the 
aviation companies that did not do all of that themselves. They could 
not. They did not have the resources. Yet, the Government went ahead 
with the research that let this whole new industry develop.
  In medicine, we have had people concerned since we have been a nation 
in doing more medical research than any nation. Out of that has come a 
medical system that is the envy of the world. At the same time, we have 
problems with it because we want to see more people benefiting from 
that system. But we have made our medical advances and breakthroughs 
largely because of basic, fundamental research. We have people willing 
to go into the laboratories and conduct that kind of research in 
oceanography, for example.
  Those who would think that just because we have moved into this new 
environment of space--there are some who think we should lay that down 
and it cannot possibly have any advantage to us. Yet, we have found in 
the past that exploring the unknown, whether it be in the lab or 
geographical expansion--can be just as valuable as any of the other 
kinds of research that we do. But we still have those who doubt.
  I am reminded of a quote that is sort of a favorite of mine because 
it shows how myopic some views can be. It involves Daniel Webster. He 
rose on the Senate floor when they were considering some territorial 
acquisitions from Mexico back in 1852. These were the lands beyond the 
Mississippi. These were the great plains beyond the Mississippi. These 
were the mountains and plains clear to the west coast. He did not like 
that idea very much. Daniel Webster rose on the Senate floor and spoke 
in opposition to the purchase. He is quoted as having said the 
following:

       What do we want with this vast worthless area, this region 
     of savages and wild beasts, of deserts of shifting sands and 
     whirlwinds of dust and cactus and prairie dogs? To what use 
     could we ever hope to put these great deserts or the 
     mountains that are covered to their very base with eternal 
     snow? What can we ever hope to do with the western coast, a 
     coast of 3,000 miles rock-bound, cheerless, uninviting, and 
     not a harbor on it? What use have we for this country? Mr. 
     President, I will never vote one cent from the Public 
     Treasury to place the Pacific coast one inch nearer to Boston 
     than it is now.

  We look back today and think how myopic that view was. I am sure 
everyone that comes from States west of the Mississippi would first be 
amused by Daniel Webster's statement. It shows how myopic the views of 
even well-educated, great public servants can become when they try and 
just assume that the status quo is what we are going to live with 
forever, and should live with forever.
  When we look up at space, in order to stay up there, you have to go 
fast enough to set up enough centrifugal force going around the Earth 
so that you balance gravity, so that, we now can assume a zero gravity 
or microgravity environment. You cannot do that here on Earth. You can 
throw something up in the air and for the time period it is going up 
and coming back down, it will be in a zero gravity condition or zero-G 
condition. However such experiments are very short-lived.
  In the spacecraft we have now, whether it be the space shuttle or the 
coming orbiting space station, up there on a permanent basis, we now 
have the capability of exercising this curiosity, exercising our 
wonder, exercising our look into the unknown to see how it can benefit 
us here on Earth. That is the reason why I rise today, to talk about 
the value of this and some of the things that, even at this early stage 
of investigation, this early stage of research in space, is of value to 
everyone right here on Earth.
  Let me take the last Space Shuttle flight that went up as an example. 
The last flight was called an ``Ohio flight'' because, as it turned 
out, four out of the five people on board were from Ohio. The flight 
was not set up that way, as an Ohio flight, to begin with. It was just 
the luck of the draw on that assignment of crew that it turned out that 
four of the five people were from Ohio.
  I went down before their launch and spent a couple of days with that 
crew down at Houston. It was intensely interesting. We went through 
some of the simulations the astronauts use for training there, as well 
as reviewed some of the experiments and things they were going to do on 
that particular flight. This was not an unusual flight in that regard. 
It was a flight that had a number of experiments on board--a dozen or 
so--and some of them that may have a particular benefit to people right 
here on Earth.
  The people on that flight were Commander Tom Hendricks from 
Woodville, OH; Nancy Jane Curry from Troy; 

[[Page S11045]]
Mary Ellen Weber of Bedford Heights, Don Thomas of Cleveland; Kevin 
Kriegle from Amityville, NY, who we made an honorary Ohioan for the 
duration of that particular mission. They did a great job. Many people 
watched the other day as they landed successfully at the cape after 
being delayed in coming back because of weather.
  But the important thing I want to stress this morning is that just on 
that one flight, some of the things they had aboard may be of extreme 
value to everybody right here. Actually, they had a total of 18 
different experiments that were on board that flight. The primary 
mission was to put into space the TDRS satellite, the tracking and data 
relay satellite system. This is a final installation of a series of 
space-based communication and tracking networks that will be used for 
lower Earth orbit communications.
  The amount of communications of data relay that that particular 
satellite will be able to handle, to me, is sort of mind boggling. Once 
it is fully up and fully operational--it is up there now but not fully 
operational--it will be used as a spare in case one of the other TDRS 
satellites develops problems. But its capacity, when fully operational, 
will be to transmit information per second, equal to about a 20 volume 
encyclopedia, to be able to transfer that amount of data per second. 
The communications that something like that provides and the ability to 
communicate with different parts of the world almost instantaneously is 
rather mind boggling to even consider.
  I will not try and go through all 18 of these experiments, but 
another one I was particularly interested in--and that the scientists 
at NASA are very excited about--is the bioreactor system. We were 
briefed on that in Houston, and one of the scientists describing this 
says that if this comes through the way they think it may, this is 
Nobel Prize material. Well, it may well be. What it does is it makes a 
new way of studying cancer cells and other cells that are in the human 
body. It provides a new way of analyzing these cells and may lead to a 
new way of treating them.
  The reason it is different is this. In a laboratory here on Earth, if 
you want to grow some cancer cells you usually must grow them on the 
bottom of a Petri dish. These cells grow in essentially a two-
dimensional way. Scientists can then analyze the cells, but because 
they are two dimensional, they do not exactly replicate how these 
cancer cells are found in the body.
  A two dimensional model is not the cells' natural environment. Cancer 
cells in the blood stream, cancer cells in a tissue, are surrounded by 
other body fluids, body parts.
  With the bioreactor, researchers can grow cells in a three-
dimensional environment, more similar to what is found in the human 
body. When cancer cells are allowed to grow in three dimensions, 
researchers can use different experimental techniques, different drugs 
or lasers or whatever, to see how these cells or tumors may best be 
treated. On a lab here on Earth a bioreactor has been used to grow 
small three dimensional breast cancer cells, but eventually the forces 
of gravity take over and these models fall apart. In a constant 
microgravity environment, like that of the space shuttle or space 
station larger cell clusters can be grown--more similar to what is 
found in the human body.
  The first efforts at that are being done now, and were conducted with 
this bioreactor development system which flew on the most recent 
shuttle. Stated in other terms, the ability of a bioreactor to provide 
the environment and metabolic support required to grow and maintain 
mammalian cell cultures in microgravity.
  This is a short statement, meaning, basically, what I said a moment 
ago. The experiments that they were starting on this last flight on 
STS-70 were with cancer cells. They want to see what reaction they get, 
how they can maintain the cells there, what reaction they have to 
different conditions, and so on.
  Can I say right here that we have the answer to cancer near at hand, 
or the answer to AIDS near at hand? No. But out of an inquiry like this 
might well come some advances that combine with others, and other 
research may give us a handle.
  Surely, this environment that they are in, where they are surrounded 
by the normal body fluids in the reactor, is much more conducive to 
research.
  The effect of microgravity on bone development has been an ongoing 
area of research. Research into osteoporosis, which is a degenerative 
bone disease, is one prime example. One thing that happens in 
microgravity is the body starts to correct itself, as it no longer 
needs the same skeletal strength it has here on Earth to maintain 
itself up there.
  We used to worry about this because if one's body eliminated enough 
calcium and the bones became much less rigid, we used to joke about the 
possibility of ``jelly bones.'' Sometime in the future if a person went 
on a long space flight, maybe you would come back and your bones would 
be so weak, so much calcium was out of them, you might not be able to 
stand without taking a chance of breaking your leg.
  Osteoporosis goes through much of this same process. Prolonged bed 
rest in the hospital creates some of that same process--the body 
throwing off much of the calcium that it has in its bones.
  In space, you develop some of these characteristics much more 
rapidly. That is the reason why you see some of the pictures coming 
back, people are up there exercising, exercising, exercising, about an 
hour every day on a treadmill, tied down with bungee cords, because 
they find that hard exercise every day is the best way to prevent that 
from happening.
  Here on Earth, one of the ways people prevent osteoporosis is by 
daily exercise. Up there, we can then use additional chemicals or 
medicines or whatever to see if we cannot reverse this process or at 
least prevent it from happening, which will have a direct relationship 
right here on Earth.
  Another experiment, commercial protein crystal growth. Crystallized 
human alpha-interferon protein. The protein crystal growth experiments 
have been particularly interesting. These crystal growths occur with 
more purity and sometimes in much different size in the weightlessness 
of space than they do here on Earth. It opens up a whole new area of 
experimentation with regard to what may be of benefit right here on 
Earth. This particular crystal also may have some cancer benefits.
  All of these things are not just curiosities in space, to be applied 
in space. They are of benefit to people right here on Earth. It always 
surprises me when people do not seem to want to realize or they talk 
down projects that may result in a whole new approach to disease. It 
may result in what we call tailormade drugs; in other words, drugs that 
will be tailored to a specific benefit to cope with a particular 
disease or a particular medical difficulty. They are doing those 
experiments there now.
  Another experiment that has a title that is rather unwieldy may have 
some defense applications for us. We do not know yet. We think it may. 
It is called the HERCULES project. Now, HERCULES stands for hand-held, 
Earth-oriented, cooperative, real time, user-friendly, location 
targeting, and environmental system. That is some handle for the 
project HERCULES. What it is, is a space-based geolocating system to 
locate a wide variety of features on the ground with great accuracy. It 
has some defense applications that may come out of that, as well as 
other scientific applications.
  Another experiment is microencap- 
sulation in space to produce novel pharmaceuticals in a weightless 
condition which can be done with more purity than they can be done here 
on Earth.
  Another one is a midcourse space experiment, which supports the 
development of surveillance capabilities of ballistic missiles during 
the midcourse of their flight. There are a number of experiments they 
perform on just that one flight.
  Going back one flight before that, we all watched as astronaut Hoot 
Gibson flew the STS-71 mission, the shuttle-MIR mission. There were 
great pictures of that, that I am sure many of my colleagues saw. On 
that mission, in addition to just being able to rendezvous with two 
100-ton vehicles coming together up there in space, they did metabolic 
experiments: Studying physiological responses in space, changes in 
blood volume, cardiovascular and pulmonary research, neurosensory 
research, how zero gravity affects brain 

[[Page S11046]]
communication. Does that tie in with brain communication? We need 
information with regard to Alzheimer's disease or whatever. Also, 
behavior and performance research, long-term effects of microgravity on 
muscle coordination, mental acuity, and once again, the protein crystal 
growth experiments.
  These are just a few of the things that are going on in the space 
program these days. I just mention these things now and, in subsequent 
remarks here on the floor, I want to give more information on some of 
these. I wanted to set the stage this morning by going back in just a 
few of the things that I have mentioned with regard to the value of 
basic research in this country, and that NASA is out there, right now, 
doing that kind of cutting edge, basic research, in this new laboratory 
of space.
  Every year, NASA publishes a book called ``Spinoffs.'' This one is 
``Spinoff, 1994,'' a whole book full of some of the things that NASA 
has been doing that are of value right here on Earth. Health and 
medicine, environment and resources management, public safety, 
consumer, home, recreational spinoffs, transportation, computer 
technology, industrial productivity, and manufacturing technology.
  I will not try to read all the things here this morning for people, 
but I commend them to my colleagues and the staffs here on the floor 
for reading, to see what is going on in some of these areas. We will be 
talking more about some of these things as time goes on.
  I know the time is limited here this morning. I will make some more 
lengthy remarks in days ahead. I wanted to take this time this morning 
to set the stage for the upcoming debate on NASA's budget.
  People have looked up for hundreds of thousands of years and wondered 
what is up there in the air, and then the Wright brothers went ahead 
and learned how to fly and learned how to stay up there for a period of 
time, and people first thought, what use was it. But we know what use 
it became later on--our whole aircraft and airline industry that lets 
people travel to far places around the world.
  Every time we come up with a new capability for doing research, it 
seems that there are those who do not want to recognize that something 
good may come out of it, whether it be agriculture research, metals 
research, aeronautical research, oceanography, geographical research, 
or whatever.
  But, as I said starting out, if there is one thing this Nation has 
learned, it is that money and time spent on basic, fundamental research 
in whatever area usually comes back and shows more value than we could 
ever foresee at the outset.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  

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