NASA PUBLIC INFORMATION EFFORT

At the same time, NASA devotes much effort to keeping the public informed about our program activities, our successes-and our failures our discoveries, achievements, and results. We make it possible for television audiences around the world to participate in man's exploration of the moon, and for the world press to tell the story promptly and accurately.

We answer nearly a million public inquiries annually. NASA exhibits were seen by over 37 million people last year-and at the Osaka Expo this year the United States pavillion featuring space will draw another 15 million people. More complete data on our public information coverage is included in appendixes 5 and 6; what I want to stress is that I believe we have done an unmatched job of public education in bringing the facts of our highly technical space program to the general public at home and abroad.

8. EXAMPLES OF NASA TECHNOLOGY TRANSFER

I have described the direct outputs of NASA's efforts to move new information into the public domain and to see it put to use. There are many additional dividends from our space programs for which NASA should only claim partial credit. These dividends, variously called spin-off, fallout, or technology transfers, should be looked at in proper perspective.

Some are real, some are prospective, some are still to be tested in the rigorous climate of a competitive marketplace. In appendix 1 we have documented some 200 examples of such dividends or byproducts of the space program. They range over many fields: medicine, materials, safety devices, electronic instrumentation, manufacturing and test techniques, tools, fire-resistant foams, and paints.

Some may only find limited application; others may in time become the nucleus of new industries. In my opinion, however, the major justification for space exploration remains its first-order benefits to science, to technology, to new direct applications, and to future U.S. wealth and power. Some of the byproducts might have been developed in time without a space program, but we have at least accelerated the process by providing the challenge, and then systematically gathering, cataloging, and disseminating the resulting technical information to the people who can put it to early use.

Thus the exhibits here today certainly do not purport to provide a self-evident justification of the Nation's space program; they represent only a very small sample of the recent transfers from aerospace technology. I would like to describe a few of them now.

AUTOMOTIVE SAFETY DEVICE

One example is an automotive safety device which originated in an experimental astronaut couch shock absorber. The device here on display consists essentially of an inner tube with O-rings around it fitting tightly into an outer tube. When compressed or extended, the rolling O-rings absorb considerable energy. The device is rugged, cheap, resettable, and reusable.

The Bureau of Public Roads has tested it in connection with highway guard rails, and found that it cuts down a 60-mile-per-hour impact to the equivalent of a 5-mile-per-hour impact. Perhaps the most impressive testimonial to its utility is the Ford Motor Company's intensive development effort aimed at incorporating this device into an automobile bumper that can safely withstand a 5-mile-per-hour direct impact. The company hopes to offer this bumper as soon as possible perhaps on its 1972 models.

The economic significance of this becomes apparent when you relate it to the Allstate Insurance Company's announced collision premium reduction of 20 percent for cars so equipped.

Another automotive-related benefit is, I am sure, familiar to you: grooved highways for reducing skidding accidents, illustrated in the display. NASA's work on aircraft tire hydroplaning led to grooving airport runways-the Washington National runway was grooved in 1967-and the same equipment is now being used on dangerous sections of highways in 18 States. Reported results are an 80- to 90-percent reduction in damage, injury, and death from skid accidents.

NASA DEVELOPMENTS IN MEDICAL FIELD

In the medical field, NASA developments have found a number of direct applications over a wide spectrum of problems. One is the use of computer techniques-developed to improve Mariner-Mars planetary photographs-to enhance the clarity of clinical X-rays, shown in the exhibit before and after enhancement.

Others are illustrated in the display of biomedical instrumentation developed at our Ames Research Laboratory. A small commercial item is the emergency lightweight blanket here on exhibit. It weighs almost nothing and has found considerable favor among sportsmen. Made of aluminzed Mylar-the same material used in the Echo balloon satellites-it reflects 80 percent of the wearer's own body heat.

The small "pinger" on display was developed to help us find space vehicles that have fallen into the ocean. The system is directional: when water closes the contact of the battery-powered onboard element, it emits "pings" which can be detected by a surface detector, enabling a search party to find the submerged object.

The FAA is considering including these devices in the automatic flight logs of transoceanic airplanes, so that in the event of a crash, the log can be recovered and the cause of accident established.

Incidentally, we have a recent example that this device really works. During the March 7 eclipse, an NRL Aerobee payload malfunctioned during reentry and was lost at sea. The "pinger" operated for 5 days and led the Navy recovery team to the spot. Using their latest deepwater techniques, they then retrieved the payload from a depth of 6,000 feet.

NASA'S SEARCH FOR FIREPROOF MATERIAL

The last item on display here really represents an entire field: fireproof and fire-retardant materials. NASA's search for a family of materials that can be used safely in an oxygen environment has led to the development of fireproof textiles, foams, plastics, and paints that hold great promise for commercial and industrial use.

Airlines, for example, are studying the use of these materials to reduce the possibility of cabin fires and the Navy is experimenting with a NASA foam to protect aircraft fuel tanks from incendiary bullets.

I have briefly recounted some of the solid, fundamental benefits that have accrued from the Nation's space program-benefits to our citizens, to the Nation, to mankind as a whole, and to world stability. I have touched on the NASA process which effectively translates scientific discovery and technological capability into progress.

It is an extremely complex process involving little understood interactions; no methodology for modeling or describing it has been developed. But we do have an intuitive feeling for how it works, and we can see the significant multiplier effects of our space program on our economy and society in the large.

The process will remain dynamic as long as we maintain an energizing current of new ideas, new techniques, new challenges to stimulate its operation. In my opinion the process has been and continues to be successful; it is creating far more than it is costing.

The exhibits here today tell only a very small part of the story, but they show you a representative sample of our published output and some examples of typical technology transfers.

The best exhibits NASA could have here today, to convey to you in more dramatic terms the achievements and values produced in the last decade, would be an Intelsat III communications satellite and a large high-speed computer, a Saturn V rocket and a Nimbus weather satellite, a Boeing 747 and a 210-foot-diameter tracking antenna. Perhaps the best exhibit of all would be to pile up $28 billion representing the aerospace industry's order backlog, or assemble on the Capitol grounds the 50,000 gulf coast residents whose lives might have been lost to Camille without weather satellite detection and tracking. These and hard, tangible results from America's space program.

9. FUTURE PROMISE OF SPACE PROGRAM

Let me touch briefly now on the future promise of the space program as we see it. One of the important new developments of great potential that should be mentioned is NASA's earth resources technology satellite program. The first steps in this program are experimental, aimed at learning what we can monitor from space.

Multispectral photographs and sensor data from Apollo flights and from specially fitted aircraft are providing the initial inputs. By combining the information gathering capabilites of space systems, the data transmission capabilities of satellites, and the high-speed data processing and large memory of the computer, we can foresee these promising first experiments growing eventually into a new global environmental information system geared to human decision processes at every level. It will have major economic value.

We will know enough about global weather to be able to modify it locally and perhaps to alter regional climates. We will also know enough to understand the second and third order implications of such actions, and will be able to act accordingly, in concert with the world community.

We will better understand the intricate processes of the oceans, and their ability to produce our food and to absorb our pollutants.

We will know our North American freshwater systems well enough to manage them effectively on a continental scale, neither wasting nor hoarding this vital resource.

Our management and use of dry land-for agriculture, forestry, recreation, and living space for tomorrow's larger population-will be based on the view we can only get from space. We will better understand the internal mechanics of the earth-and be able to measure their effects well enough to predict earthquakes and volcanic activity early enough to avoid loss of life. We will better understand the distribution and utilization of the earth's mineral resources.

AIR, SEA, AND LAND TRAFFIC CONTROL

Navigation and traffic control, for air, sea, and land, will increasingly rely on space systems. Satellites will carry the majority of the world's communication traffic, from telephone calls and computer networks to graduate lectures and television meetings. TV broadcasting and switching functions will be done in orbit.

Transportation will be more convenient, quiet, rapid, and safe, and the present city-suburb-country complexes will be greatly modified by integrated transportation systems that permit the most efficient use of time and facilities without central city congestion.

We will have increasingly productive facilities in space, perhaps for manufacturing and medical treatment; certainly for astronomy, biology, physics, and earth studies. We will explore the solar system, first with instruments, then with man. We will unlock new fundamental doors to knowledge, and will be able to use that knowledge for the benefit of man on earth.

This perspective is not overly optimistic; history too often has shown us that our predictions fall far short of what actually happens. In less than a generation we may have progressed well beyond these forecasts. As Chairman Anderson has pointed out, we are only limited by our own imagination.

CRITICAL REEXAMINATION OF SPACE PROGRAMS

It seems to me that in recent months we Americans have been engaging in a national contest of critical reexamination of our space program, which I believe is right and good. It is perhaps typical of us that we want to hang a price tag on everything and then haggle over prices as though we were shopping in an ancient eastern bazaar. But we don't want to carry this to the point where it will be said of us that we know the price of everything but the value of nothing. Our national self-examination of the space program has evoked widespread discussion, some thoughtful, some superficial, some informed, some ignorant of the facts. The best discussion has been in your hearings, in my opinion, where we have built a historical record that has placed before the American people what NASA has committed to accomplish, when we intend to do it, and how much it should cost.

NASA is proud of its record of working with you to set bold objectives before the American people, and then publicly meeting the test to see whether we accomplish the objectives on time and within budget. I know of no other Government activity that can match the record of the space program.

We seem, however, to come inevitably to the dollar questions: What has it cost? What should it have cost? Would the money have been better not spent, or expended on other things "here on earth"?

Without repeating the obvious fact that indeed all NASA's dollars are spent on earth, my reply to these questions is that we are getting more than our money's worth, and must press forward vigorously both in the space program and here on earth. These are not mutually exclusive, but mutually supporting enterprises.

SPACE EFFORT COST ONE-HALF PERCENT OF GNP

The United States has been spending more and more of its tax dollars to effect social change: in schools, in welfare programs, in health programs, in poverty programs and has also been spending tax dollars in NASA to effect technological change.

The former involves the redistribution of existing resources, the latter involves the creation of new resources. The social account is far larger and growing rapidly. Last year's growth alone added to the social accounts the dollar equivalent of two whole NASA programs, and the President's fiscal year 1971 budget proposal is to increase the social accounts by 212 NAŠA's.

In hard, cold facts, our space effort over the decade has cost this Nation less than one-half of 1 percent of our gross national product, and in return it has made a major contribution to the growth of our GNP from $440 billion in 1958 to $900 billion in 1969. I would submit that our $450 billion growth in GNP is clearly the principal factor that has made possible our social advances.

Reviewing Federal budgets from 1959-69, we find that the United States has spent $1.4 trillion, and of that figure, the NASA's program has cost $35 billion, only about 212 percent of Federal spending. I am firmly convinced that the many resulting benefits to our Nation and to mankind everywhere far outweigh this modest investment. I cannot imagine where America-and the western world-would be today had Americans not undertaken to meet the challenge of space.

We are still at the beginning of the space age. Despite many impressive achievements, our present systems are crude indeed by the standards of tomorrow's space shuttle, space station, nuclear propulsion, and science and application spacecraft.

Let us continually reexamine the direction and pace of the American space program, increasing the thoughtfulness and intellectual content of the debate, by better understanding the benefits to America and mankind. With this knowledge, let us press boldly forward to explore this endless frontier that now lies within man's reach.

SPACE EXPERIMENT REGARDING CANCER

Senator CANNON. Thank you, Dr. Paine, for a very fine and very comprehensive statement. The exhibits that have been made a part of the record will also be very helpful, I am sure, and also the exhibits that you have on display in the room here.

I intend to make a floor statement today advising the Senate that these exhibits will be on display here for 2 days so that people who may wish to do so can come by and see them.

A few weeks ago NASA announced an outstanding discovery by