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CONTENTS

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Bahcall, John, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton N.J.; accompanied
by Prof. Lewis M. Hobbs, University of Chicago.......

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Prepared statement__

1694

McElroy, Dr. Michael B., director, Center for Earth and Planetary Science,
Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass.-

1675

Simpson, John A., director, Enrico Fermi Institute, University of Chicago--

1683

Downs, Hugh, president, National Space Institute....

1758

Kurtz, Howard and Harriet, president and vice president, War Control
Planners, Inc., and editors of the Newsletter, Checkpoint..

1772

Articles__.

1781

ADDITIONAL ARTICLES, LETTERS, AND STATEMENTS

Biegon, Bradford, statement....

1787

Department of Defense Activities in Space and Aeronautics, Fiscal Year
1978, statement___

1603

NASA's Role in Aeronautics-staff report of Senate Committee on Aero-
nautical and Space Sciences__

1474

Richards, Bill, article in the Washington Post--

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Schemmer, Benjamin F., article in the Armed Forces Journal International.

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NASA AUTHORIZATION FOR FISCAL YEAR 1978

MONDAY, MARCH 7, 1977

U.S. SENATE,

COMMITTEE ON COMMERCE, SCIENCE,

AND TRANSPORTATION,

SUBCOMMITTEE ON SCIENCE AND SPACE,

Washington, D.C.

The subcommittee met at 10:15 a.m. in room 235 of the Russell Senate Office Building; Hon. Adlai Stevenson (chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.

Senator STEVENSON. This morning the subcommittee resumes its hearings on NASA authorization for fiscal year 1978.

Our first witness is Dr. James J. Kramer, Acting Associate Administrator for Aeronautics and Space Technology.

Dr. Kramer, I see you do have a lengthy statement. If you would prefer, and can summarize it, then I would be happy to enter it in the record.

STATEMENT OF DR. JAMES J. KRAMER, ACTING ASSOCIATE ADMINISTRATOR, OFFICE OF AERONAUTICS AND SPACE TECHNOLOGY, NATIONAL AERONAUTICS AND SPACE ADMINISTRATION; ACCOMPANIED BY PAUL HOLLOWAY, ACTING DEPUTY ASSOCIATE ADMINISTRATOR

Dr. KRAMER. Thank you.

Senator STEVENSON. Without objection the statement will be entered in the record.

Dr. KRAMER. I would like to introduce my deputy, Paul Holloway. His normal position is Director of Space at Langley Research Center, and he is serving temporarily as my deputy. He will assist me on any questions you might have at the end of the testimony.

I do have a lengthy statement as you pointed out and we are prepared to summarize it. Since this is a summary, I thought it would be worthwhile to give you an overview of what OAST is all about, what things we have done, and what we are trying to do in the future. So I will depart, first of all, from the testimony and give you an overview of OAST.

FIGURE 1.-OAST Missions

Improve usefulness, performance, speed, safety, and efficiency of aeronautical and space vehicles.

Preserve the role of the United States as a leader in aeronautical and space technology.

Support national defense by transfer of technology with military value or significance.

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We have three broadly characterize i missions. We are ring to improve the wel vrea, performance characteristics, and efficiency

of aeronautica, and share verides, Br so doing we want to presente

the role of the United States as a leader in aeronautical and space

We also perform the very important function of supporting national defense objective by the transfer of th teobro.62% with military tale or significance. We translate these missions into zoals and objectives and they are listed on the next chart.

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Basically, we seek to provide a solid technological basis in a variety of aeronautical and space disciplines,

In some instances, in addition to provising the broad base of technology, we do carry out some proof-of-concept demonstrations in rather advanced systems and in certain, special cases, we build test vehicles which are for specific test purposes, and some which have rather generalized research purposes and could be referred to as flying facilities. I will talk about one or two of those in the course of my testimony this morning.

FIGURE 3.-The OAST "Product": Technology.

The end product of our activity is technology. And what I mean by technology is the know-how which leads to improved aeronautical or space venicles. We do not wind up delivering payloads to space or carrying out specific exploration missions.

FIGURE 4.-Characteristics of aeronautical research and technology.

Critical to U.S. leadership.

Long leadtime: 10 to 20 years to application.

Complex test facilities required.

High leverage potential: Smali technical advances can yield large benefits. Most consider conflicting req irements: Such as safety, environment, eLergy, performance, cost and reliability.

Rather, we deliver the technology to user organizations to accomplish those specific mission objectives. That leads to some characteristics of our aeronautical technology as shown on this slide. It is critical to C.. leadership and the US. position in aeronautical technology today is a result of the broadly based program for the development of technology supported through the years. Unfortunately, technology has the characteristic that it must be developed well in advance of its actual time of application. Hence, we are working 10 to 30 years in advance of requirements.

In addition, our work is such that we require rather complex and unfortunately, rather expensive test facilities. However, it does have a high leverage potential in that small advances in technology can result in very major advances in system capability. We do get involved in tradeoff, for example, the tradeoffs between system performance, safety considerations and environmental impact.

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