Dan Goldin on Space Exploration and America's Technological Future

DANIEL GOLDIN, NATIONAL AERONAUTICS AND SPACE ADMINISTRATION (NASA) ADMINISTRATOR
SUBJECT: SPACE EXPLORATION AND AMERICA’S TECHNOLOGICAL FUTURE
MODERATOR: GIL KLEIN
NATIONAL PRESS CLUB WASHINGTON, DC
MONDAY, JUNE 20, 1994
MR. KLEIN: Good afternoon, and welcome to the National Press Club. My name is Gil Klein. I’m the Club’s president and I’m a national correspondent with Media General Newspapers, writing for the Richmond Times Dispatch, the Tampa Tribune, and the Winston-Salem Journal. I’d like to welcome my fellow Club members and their guests in the audience today, as well as those of you who are watching us on C-SPAN or listening to us on national public radio or the Internet global computer network.
Before introducing our head table, I would like to remind you of some upcoming events. On Thursday, Donna Shalala, secretary of Health and Human Services, will be on hand to discuss President Clinton’s welfare reform proposal. On Tuesday, June 28th, Jean Bertrand Aristide, exiled president of Haiti will talk about his efforts to restore democracy in Haiti. And on Wednesday, June 29th, Thomas F. — better known as “Mac McLarty, the White House chief of staff will be here.

If you have any questions for our speaker, and I certainly trust that you will, please write them on the cards provided for you at your tables, and hand them forward, and I will ask many as time allows.
I’d now like to introduce our head table guests, and ask them to stand briefly as I read their names. Please, withhold any applause until I’ve read all of the names.
Starting on your right is Igor Borisenko of the TASS news Agency; Kathy Sawyer of the Washington Post; John Carey of Business Week; Dr. Wesley Harris, associate administrator for the Office of Aeronautics at NASA; Jim Asker, the space technology editor of Aviation Week; Mrs. Judy Goldin, the wife of our speaker. Skipping over our speaker for a moment, we have Christy Wise, a freelance journalist and chairman of the National Press Club’s Speakers Committee; Dr. France Cordova, chief scientist for NASA; Dan Carney of the Houston Post and the member of the committee that organized today’s luncheon; Yuji Tamura of the Hokkaido Shimbun; Paul Hoverston of USA Today; and Andrew Lawler of Space News. (Applause.)
I’d also like to thank staff members Melissa Bender, Sherry Burton, Melanie Abdow Dermott, and Jeff Tarbell for organizing today’s luncheon.
Today, we are pleased to have with us Mr. Daniel Goldin, the administrator of the National Aerutics and Space Administration. During the Bush presidency, the White House Space Council, chaired by Vice President Dan Quayle, had gotten fed up with what they saw as an overly bureaucratic NASA — too many huge projects, too much red ink. Quayle wanted to restore some of the flexibility and creative thinking of NASA’s youth. To meet that challenge, President Bush brought in an outsider. While Mr. Goldin began his career at NASA, he left in 1967 to take a job with the aerospace defense contractor, TRW, where he oversaw the development of satellites. When he was tapped by Mr. Bush to take over NASA, he was vice president and general manager of TRW’s Space and Technology group.
A self-described agent of change, Mr. Goldin was able to make the transition into the Clinton administration. He spoke their language about re-inventing government. He put NASA on what he called the “Ultra Slim Fast Diet.” He replaced an Apollo era generation of crew cut senior managers with a younger and more diverse crowd from outside NASA. He simplified the agency’s chains of command, eliminated layers of bureaucracy, and cut thousands of jobs. “I’m sick of Apollo stories,” he said. “It’s time to write history, not review it.” Just what Mr. Goldin should be writing is not clear.
Twenty-five years after Neil Armstrong’s famed, “Giant leap for mankind,” America does not seem to know where its next step in space should be. Some critics suggest that human space missions were Cold War bravado that had no place in an age of global competition, robotics, and the information super highway. Others insist that America is yearning for a new wave of human space flight that could take astronauts back to the moon, and perhaps even to Mars.
That brings us to a crucial point. Within a matter of days, the House of Representatives votes on continuing the $27 billion se station. NASA sees the space station as the pipeline that will keep human space program alive into the next century, while engineers consider where to take it next. But the space station’s margin of support in Congress has been dwindling. And this year, it could go the way of the super conducting super-collider, into the junk-heap of expensive technological wonders.
Mr. Goldin has said that canceling that project would be a terrible mistake that would destroy NASA’s historical balance between human and robotic space mission, eliminate an important investment, and deprive children of a source of inspiration. “Exploration is part of what we live for,” he has said. “It’s how we grow as intelligent beings.”
Ladies and gentlemen, please join me in a warm Press Club welcome for NASA administrator, Mr. Daniel Goldin. (Applause.)
MR. GOLDIN: Thank you, Gil, and thank you for the invitation to be here today — and you had it exactly correct. We are facing an extremely critical vote in Congress on the space station, and it’s coming up in just a few days. It almost seems that it’s become an annual summer ritual in Washington. We have a summer and we have another vote on the space station. But there’s something different about this summer. Powerful currents of history are coming together — not only are we celebrating the 25th anniversary of the first landing on the moon, but we are also debating the future of our nation’s space program like never, ever before, and, by extension, the future that our children will inherit from us.
And there’s a third factor that makes this summer special. At the direction of Presidents Clinton and Yeltsin, we are now merging the strengths of the two greatest space-faring nations of the world to join with our partners in Europe, Japan, and Canada. And moving very fast but prudently, to look forward to a successful conclusion of the negotiations we have going on. This is a very important foreign policy initiative, and it represents profound change in our relationship with Russia — both in space and on Earth. We’re learning to trust one another, to work together, to bring our talent together for our children, so we’ll do things to benefit society, instead of stockpiling weapons aimed at each other.
And that’s why it’s been such a high priority for the Clinton administration. In fact, we couldn’t have come so far so fast without the direct involvement of the president, the vice president, and I’d like to really add, the bipartisan support of the United States Congress, This is a bold and an exciting course of action. There’s no guarantee of success. It has a large share of risk. But that’s what NASA is all about — taking risks. That’s what it was about 25 years ago when we sent Apollo 11 astronauts to the moon. What was Apollo, if not risky? Armstrong and Aldrin landed with less than 15 seconds of fuel. On the way down, they had to contend with alarms and klaxons going off. We sometimes forget that. We look at the glory things, but NASA is about taking risks, going to the edge, and not being afraid.
We heard the same criticism then as we hear about the space station today. Why spend money on space when there are so many people starving on Earth. If we had listened to the critics, though, we wouldn’t have had taken the risks that had paid off with a bonanza of technology and inspiration that just permeates our daily lives. Think how different the world would be — the world is now from 1969.
We have micro-electronics found in everything from digital watches to microwaves, and advanced computers, and automatic teller machines, and modern digital communications that derived from the ultra-reliable software and communications systems between mission control and the Apollo Capsule — not just Tang, teflon, and velcro, but the fundamental furnace of technology for America. That’s why we took risks on Apollo, and that’s why we’re taking them on space station, and in other new endeavors that are just over the horizon. It’s more than just flying in space together with former enemies, more than just studying stars and galaxies. We and the Russians both know that taking risks ultimately leads to better life for future generations.
This nation used to take risks and it used to have a long-term vision that spanned decades. We did things. We built things. In 1956, President Eisenhower started a program to build 42,500 miles of highway. We’re nearly finished — 40 years later. We built airports, wind tunnels. We built particle accelerators. We invested more than a small fraction of our gross national product on research and development, on science and engineering. And then we lost the vision. We stopped investing in the future. We ran up an incredible national debt, and polluted our environment. And we didn’t provide economic opportunities for the next generation.
Since the early ’70s, we’ve been a risk adverse society. The Vietnam War was winding down, national debt was beginning to be a problem, and America was beginning to lose confidence in itself.
In the midst of all that, private industry and the public sector made a variety of decisions -ll with the same theme, “Concentrate on today. Don’t look ahead to the future. Survive and consume.” Look at some of the decisions that were made in the area of the science and technology in the air and space domain. In 1971, we canceled the supersonic transport. We let the Europeans build the Concorde out from under us. We said it was too noisy, too expensive, and too hard on the environment. What we really meant was, it’s too daring. It’s too risky to solve these problems. It doesn’t come with a money back guarantee. And anyway, America owns 91 percent of the long haul jet transport business, so why do we have to take any risks.
What could happen? What happened is that Europe built the knowledge it gained from the Concorde program and formed Airbus Industries, which has walked away with 30 percent of what had been America’s traditional market. We’ve lost hundreds of thousands of jobs over the next 20 years because we were afraid to step up to new challenges. We were afraid to take risks. And one could plot a curve and watch that market share going down and down and down and down. And if you look at the future, there are 14,000 long haul jet subsonic transport planes that are going to be sold in the next 20 years — $800 billion worth of business. You calculate what 10 percent loss in that market is, and the impact to U.S. jobs.
Another fateful decision we made in the early ’70s was not to build a lunar base. We had just accomplished one of the most daring exploits in history by landing on the moon, but we shrank back from the next step. People said, “America can’t afford it.” But the entire space program at the height of Apollo never exceeded 1 percent of the gross national product. Today, it’s only a quarter of a percent, and we’re still debating it. Canceling one program or all of them would not have solved the problems. y wouldn’t even solve them today. But we’ve listened to that argument and we scaled back our plans for the future.
By the way, do you realize that when the Americans are asked how much the country spends on the space program, a large percentage of
them respond, “Between 200 billion a year and 300 billion a year,” about the same size as the Defense Department. And that’s why there’s this perception, if we cancel the space program, we could cure the ills in American society. But, in fact, it’s about one-twentieth that number — $14 billion a year. Most people don’t realize what a tenuous investment we are making in the future.
Last year, we canceled the super conducting super-collider, and America lost the ability to study inner-space. That won’t hurt us one year or two years or three years from now, but in 30 years, it’s knowledge we won’t have. It’s knowledge about the fundamental interactions of matter. Last night, I went to a dinner with some of our Russian colleagues that told me with pride, “Mr. Goldin, we are going to continue to build the 21 kilometer super-collider. Why did America give up on your super-collider, when our economy is in such a shambles and you have such wealth here?”
We have to take risks and we have to reach out to involve and inspire all of America’s people. America will never be on the cutting edge of high-technology unless our work force looks like the nation and the work force is going to change. Until a Black elementary school child in Detroit, a Latino teenager in Los Angeles, or a disabled child in Kansas City can not only dream dreams, but live them, we will not achieve what we have to achieve.
And I might stop here and pose, and say we have two people at the head table from NASA, the high leadership of NASA. The future face of NASA is at this head table, Dr. France Cordova, Dr. Wes Harris.
This is what young people need. It’s nice to have the Michael Jordans, but the young people need people who will inspire them to go on to other things. I don’t want to be demeaning about basketball; I don’t want to be demeaning about sports figures, but unless people could see people who look and speak like them in high-tech jobs, NASA is visible to hundreds of millions of people, and for too many years, we have looked too homogeneous. The hope of America is in what you see at the head table here today.
Our children need all the courage and inspiration we can give them, because risk taking is not something they hear much about now. America’s children are becoming couch potatoes just like their parents. By the time many of them graduate from high school, a recent study said they will have watched 22,000 hours of television, almost twice the amount of time they’ll spend in the classroom. But it’s not entirely the fault of today’s children. They’re suffering from our timidity as a nation. Why should they do anything but try to get along when America has been simply in a survival mode for the last decade or so, and has a 30-second mentality that says, spend today, worry tomorrow.
One need only read a recent article in the Wall Street Journal where they talked about the turnover in American CEOs. It was about a month ago. They turn over because they don’t produce results in three to six months. They want it now; they want it fast; they want it without pain, and that isn’t what made America. So this is not limited to government. In America, 43 million people tuned into the Super Bowl this year. We spent $57.7 billion on beer to wash down $2.6 billion of chips.
This can’t be all that we do as a nation. We can’t sit back and watch the world go by and wonder why our children graduate from college, and they don’t have jobs. And this isn’t theoretical. I spoke at three commencements at universities across our land. These young people are telling me they don’t have jobs. The buzzard is coming home to roost because we invest in survival and consumption and not in the future, and then we don’t worry about it. Nor can we just make money to see our own needs. A study done by the American Council on Education and UCLA that surveyed students entering college in 1987 revealed that of a record number of freshmen surveyed, nearly 76 percent listed being very well off financially as an essential life goal. That’s a far cry from 1967 when 83 percent of them felt that developing a meaningful philosophy of life was important.
Making money is not enough. It isn’t enough for an individual, and it isn’t enough for a nation. Great societies have taken risks, and they’ve achieved incredible things. The Egyptians built Pyramids of Gaza, one of the seven wonders of the world; the Mayans built observatories from which to map the heavens and understand nature; the ancient Greeks produced profound art and philosophy; the Romans built 50,000 miles of hard-surfaced highways, not a far cry from what we’ve done. It took them four centuries instead of four decades, but they did it. But when the Romans stopped looking outward and turned inward, living only for the day at hand, that once great civilization began rotting from within, and was easy prey to invaders.
There is a lesson for us here. There are many bold and noble things that America can do to reclaim our heritage as riskkers. We’re doing it right now by forging ahead with the international space station. Building a space station means we choose risk instead of status quo; challenge instead of mediocrity. The space station is pushing the boundaries of scientific knowledge with high technology. Without a station, without a long duration presence in space, we’re short changing ourselves and future generations. The American Medical Association agrees. Last week they gave the space station a strong vote of confidence. They did it precisely because of the research avenues available to us in micro-gravity environments. Avenues that absolutely aren’t available on the ground. But both areas compliment each other.
The AMA realizes that our future in many important ways lies beyond the skies of planet earth. The space station, indeed our entire space program, is our stepping stone to the future. Over and over, critics have harped on how much it will cost, and what it won’t be able to do. It’s amazing what people know is certainty about what they don’t know about. Our message is exactly the opposite. Look what it will be able to do, and especially look to the potential benefits. In the past two years, NASA has chopped about $30 billion out of our approximately $100 billion five-year plan — a 30 percent cut.
We’ve stepped up to the budget challenge as few other agencies have, with enthusiasm and support of the President and the Congress in making these cuts, because we want to be part of the solution, not part of the problem. Yet even as we’ve done that we’ve managed to start seven significant new programs that have phenomenal payoffs for the American people. Let me give you some examples. We are proposing to fly a small robotic lander to Mars for about one-fifth the price of the Mars observer. Besides giving us valuable new data about the red planet,e demands of the mission give a boost to a struggling robotics industry here on earth with very, very long-term micromechanical and microelectronic and other devices.
Within two years, we’ll launch two small new earth-scanning satellites, which we’ve nicknamed Lewis and Clark. One will be so precise that it can tell an Elm tree from a Sugar Maple, and whether the trees are healthy. The other will help city planners by imaging urban areas in unprecedented detail. Lewis and Clark can open up new opportunities for commercial earth sensing products that could turn an $800 million a year industry into an $8 billion a year market. But more important, it will enhance the quality of life for all Americans.
We’re planning to send a small space craft to an earth crossing asteroid. It will demand new robotics technologies and will also give us highly desirable knowledge about a class of celestial objects that could pose a collision threat to the planet. We’re doing a proof of concept work for a new supersonic airliner that could revolutionize air travel, much like the Boeing 707 did 40 years ago and possibly, if we’re successful, produce a quarter of a trillion dollar market. It will be an industry decision whether to build the plane, but NASA is making sure they’ll have the technology to make it environmentally safe, economically practical, with fares about the same as today’s jumbo jets.
As a bonus, the work in this program on clean, quiet jet engines, offers the potential for Detroit to revolutionize auto engines on the ground to consume less fuel and be much more efficient and less polluting. Whole new industries are being created. Some, as the protein crystals grown on the shuttle are in such high quality that they may make possible disease fighting drugs that would have been difficult, if not impossible to design before. Just thisrch, a company formed for this purpose, sold out its initial offering of two and a half million shares on the open market in just four hours. That company is valued at $48 million.
Designer drug from space technology for planet earth. You don’t have to take it on face that these investments will pay off for our technological future and the future of our children. Look at the record. It happened with Apollo; it is happening with our programs today. It will happen with the space station and other bold new initiatives of tomorrow. Just as was the case 25 years ago when some people called for scrapping Apollo, some argue that canceling the space station will produce a huge boon to the nation’s coffers. Our experience with the super-conducting super collider shows that funds slashed from science just vanish on the floor of the Congress. They don’t go into other science; they don’t go into investments in the future.
It is not a lot to show for compromising the future of our children. As administrator, I’ve been to more than 50 cities, and I’ve heard time and time again from civic groups — average American workers and children — that the space program is one of the most exciting and inspirational things America does. It stirs people’s souls; it gives them something to dream about. A quarter of a century after humans set foot on another world, we’re at a fundamental crossroads again. We have to take risks; we have to explore space not
just for ourselves and today, but for our children and the quality of their lives in the next century. It’s for my daughters and your sons and daughters, and that should make all the difference. Thank you very much.
MR. KLEIN: Thank you very much, Mr. Goldin. We have a few questions here. We could always use more, so please put on your thinking caps. Here comes one up here now. This quest says, you say this nation used to take risks and do great things, but wasn’t the nation’s economy in better shape then? Can we afford the space station?
MR. GOLDIN: We have a $5.5 trillion economy. We have a $1.5 trillion federal budget. What we do in the federal budget — let’s just take space aside. Half of that budget — three quarters of a trillion dollars goes to entitlement programs. Another quarter trillion goes to paying off the federal debt; another quarter of a trillion dollars goes to defense — all of them are defensed. And then you look at the remaining sixth of the budget, we have to pay for veterans’ medical benefits; we have to pay for housing. The investment account for non-defense R&D has gone down from five percent of the budget to two percent of the budget since 1965.
If we eliminate all non-defense R&D, not just NASA, we’re not going to solve these problems. The problem we have is in corporate America, and in the government, we keep whittling away at the easy things because you don’t feel the pain of making a cut today when the pay off is ten and 20 years out. And let me give you an example. I just met with Seymour Cray. I said, Seymour, why in the world did you leave Cray Research? He said, you know why, Dan, they said we are only allowed to evolve computers, we cannot have revolutionary designs, because if we evolve computers, we meet the near-term financial needs of the corporation. So they want to stick with parallel processing architecture and use silicon forever. I wanted to go to Galiamarsonite, revolutionary is too much risk.
Let me give you the problem if you just want to not invest in the future. The American Swiss watch manufacturers — the a Swiss watch manufacturers, a number of years ago had 80 or 90 percent of the market. In two years they lost it. They were convinced that the menical watch would be here forever. We spend a quarter of a trillion dollars a year on research on silicon in this country; we spend very little on superconduction, Galiamarsonite and new advanced forms for semiconductors.
It is the same argument. We’re on the margin. You can’t build a space station — it is less than a few hundredths of a percent of the NASA budget. The nation could afford it. If we don’t do these things, we won’t move forward, and on top of that, we will meet a very big problem in terms of what does the American word mean worldwide? We committed to the Russians.
The Russians are building a supercollider with an economy in chaos. We can’t even build a supercollider and a space station? I don’t accept it.
MR. KLEIN: You mentioned the advantages for the pharmaceutical industry, the commercial advantages of the space station, which was what the Reagan administration used in the 1980s to sell this in the first place. Yet the talk of it seemed to have died away in the late ’80s, early ’90s. Are you getting a lot of support from commercial interests who want to use the zero gravity of the space station, or has that died away?
MR. GOLDIN: As we limped along with a few weeks in space on the space shuttle, we had — it took us 12 years to get one year in space with the space shuttle. We had to have about 55 flights to get that time in space. We’ve been making some progress. And in the process, we’ve learned quite a bit. I don’t want to contend today that we are going to be able to get all the commercial companies involved.
What we’re talking about is a laboratory that does unique research. Yes, a number of companies are getting more involved and beginning to spend money because they’re seeing results. But it’s going to take us a decade for the payoff. You have to look at the space station as a place where you have the absence of gravity and you study fundamental physics of fluids and reactions in biomed, biotech, in electronics and in materials. It is a broad spectrum of activity. And as we learn more, as we get more time in space, we’ll get more production. But I don’t want to contend that we have all the companies lined up.
Another point I want to make is what Dr. DeBakey says. When Michael Faraday invented electricity, he did not predict that the light bulb would be there. So it is a multidiscipline laboratory where we’ll work on a variety of technological projects.
MR. KLEIN: This questioner says with Representative George Brown’s decision to stay on board, does that salvage the space station for this year?
MR. GOLDIN: Chairman Brown is a great American. He is very, very concerned about the future of American science. It’s not just the space program. And he’s been watching the very same thing happen as I’ve described here. We keep solving the deficit problems by cutting back on all the future investment funds. That’s his concern.
I share that concern. He is having a very difficult time, and he decided that he’ll be able to support the space station. I think we’ve made tremendous progress. I salute Chairman Brown. I’m glad he came out in favor of the space station.
I’d like to believe that we’re building a new coalition for the space station so it’ll be much broader-based and just not limited to the space area but for all Americans. I’m very proud that last year we had a significant increase in the number of minority members of the Congress voting for the space station. And I think when you take a look at the vote this year, you’ll see even more members of the minority — minority members of Congress supporting the space station because they understand the importance of investment in the future. So I’m thrilled that Chairman Brown is there, but I’m also believing that there’ll be a broader coalition for support of the space station. I’m very optimistic about it.
MR. KLEIN: I think you mentioned to me earlier that the American Medical Association is lobbying for it also. Are you broadening your base of support outside of Congress itself and outside of the space and technology industry?
MR. GOLDIN: I want to tell you that we’ve traveled to 60 American cities, as I said. And we’re going toaces where NASA is not. And every time we go there, we expect to hear this tremendous negative barrage about the space program. And in some places it’s like walking into a holy temple. In Nashville, Tennessee, if I ever said anything bad about the space station or the space program, they would have run me out of town on a rail. And I see an incredible support.
I just went through all the news clippings before I came here to see what they said about the space program after we went to these cities. No, I think the American public understands the future and they’re very much in favor of it.
MR. KLEIN: This questioner would like to know who would gain the intellectual property rights to discoveries made on the space station.
MR. GOLDIN: The American people, for starters. And as we develop relationships with industry, we will negotiate arrangements with the industry for the use of the facility on the space station. So if the industry has something prioritory and they put in an appropriate amount of money, the American people again will benefit from some of the royalties that we will work out with them. So the equation is American people win, American people win.
MR. KLEIN: Will there be a U.S.-Russian contract this week? What are the final sticking points?
MR. GOLDIN: Well, I spent some time this weekend with my good friend Yuri Kopchev. Our teams have been working together. And we’ve been given a challenge by the vice president of the United States and by the prime minister of Russia. They’ve both made it very clear that when we have the Gore-Chernomyrdin commission meeting on June 23rd that there will be a signing ceremony. I believe there will be a signing ceremony. I’m very optimistic that we’ll get there. I’ll be very proud of what we’re going to do, and I’m sure the Russians will be proud of their part of the otiation.
MR. KLEIN: How does Russian space technology compare with ours? What are their strengths and weaknesses?
MR. GOLDIN: The strength of the Russian space program is in the overwhelming support it has from the people of Russia. And again, as I hear the concerns in this country expressed about the space program, I think about Russia. They have an inflation rate of 8 percent a month, which is way down from before. They have people who are having a hard time finding jobs and maintaining them. They have an economy in chaos. But they’re together as a people in their space program. It is part of the national psyche of Russia. I think that’s the biggest strength.
Because of that, they have outstanding capability in materials, in propulsion engineering. Mechanical engineering is outstanding. Some of their welding techniques are world-class. America has strengths that complement the Russians. We’re strong in electronics and computing, analysis. And when you take these two capabilities and put them together, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts; so strengths and weaknesses. I look forward to this year when I’ll see America supporting the space station and the space program in the broader sense, just like the Russian people do.
MR. KLEIN: Is there a value to American military policy of including the Russians in the space station program by giving jobs for many of their scientists?
MR. GOLDIN: Let me make one thing very clear. This is a cooperative program with Russia. The United States and our existing partners, Europe, 10 countries in Europe, Japan and Canada, are going to put up about 350,000 pounds worth of equipment into earth orbit. The Russians are going to put up about 350,000 pounds of equipment into earth orbit that’s going to get paid for out of the Russian coffers. It is going to keep the Russianngaged in something that’s very important to them.
The Russian president talked to our president and said we ought to bring our programs together. The Russians want to join our program. The benefit is that instead of sitting at two sides of an ocean with weapons aimed at each other because of what we lack in knowledge about each society, we’ll be working together side by side with the Russians. And let me tell you, Yuri Nikolayev Kopchev and I initially spent our careers aiming weapons at each other. And when I met with him this weekend, I gave him a big hug because he’s more than just somebody who I’m working with. I’ve learned about him.
Think of the possibility of thousands of American scientists and engineers working with thousands of Russian scientists and engineers, not to build weapons of mass destruction but to bring us together. Now, there’s no guarantees. There could be a problem. I worry if we don’t give our children that opportunity to work with the Russians. So it’s really important from a national policy standpoint. I don’t want to think of it in terms of a military standpoint.
I also would like to say that because the Russians want to work with us so deeply, they’re focusing on very positive things. And good things have happened. They joined the missile technology control regime, so they’re controlling — they’re limiting the exports of this terrible technology. I don’t know that there’s a direct correlation, but they also canceled a contract with the Indian government to export cryogenic upper-stage technology to India.
So I think that there are some very important things, but the fundamental issue is this is a turning point. The Berlin Wall came down, and that was a symbol of the end of an era. We’re in an unstable equilibrium worldwide. We can’t turn our backs on the Russians. It is risky, but we must reach out a hand. And maybe other people will hug each other like I hugged Yuri Kopchev this weekend.
MR. KLEIN: This questioner would like to know, how will the United States track the money it is paying Russia for space station hardware to make sure it enhances our foreign policy goals?
MR. GOLDIN: The United States is investing on the order of $27 billion in the development of the space station. We are talking about purchasing time to rent the Mir space station for on the order of $400 million. And that we’re going to do directly with the Russian government. So I want to put the numbers in perspective. Many Americans think we’re going to send billions of dollars to the Russians.
We are paying the Russians to rent the Mir space station for under $400 million. We’re going to get 21 astronaut months on board that station. We’re going to get 10 flights to the station. The Russians are going to have to provide cargo, maintenance, command and control. And it is a market-driven price that we’re paying. It is a very small price. And by renting that space station, we believe we could avoid problems measured in billions of dollars of knowledge that we’ll gain.
When we built Apollo, we had Gemini to work out the problems of command and control and logistics. Before the Hubble mission, we had multiple flights into space on board the space shuttle so we could be sure all our procedures would be successful. Without that Mir space station to run our preliminary experiments on assembly techniques, on power generation, on logistics, command and control and communications, I would think that we’d have a terrible problem. It’s a small amount of money. But on top of that, we’ve set up techniques to track the money to assure it gets done right.
We have one area. We’re going to be puasing an orbit-raising tug from a Russian company, Krunichev. To assure direct accountability for the money, we have selected Lockheed, an American corporation that has worked with the Krunichev company on other areas. And Lockheed will have corporate-to-corporate connections with the Russians so we’ll be sure the money is being appropriately spent.
MR. KLEIN: There are a number of questions about the shuttle, the future of the shuttle. This questioner says the space station presumably will outlast the useful life of the shuttle fleet. Are you optimistic Congress will fund a new man-rated spacecraft given its tendency to chip away at the shuttle budget?
MR. GOLDIN: I don’t think it’s a foregiven conclusion that the space shuttle will not be able to complete the space station mission. However, we are taking a look at approaches to lower-cost, high- reliability access to space. And at the turn of the century, we’re going to have to make a decision as to whether or not we’re going to change the shuttle out with a new machine or make some upgrades to the shuttle.
If we go to a new machine — in fact, there was someone that came up to me here that was a Wall Street investment banker — it is not going to be the same old way. I don’t think that NASA’s going to go back to the American Congress and say, “We need billions of dollars so we can go make a big program to try and get a replacement for the shuttle.”
I’m waiting for the new White House policy, but I expect that what NASA will do is leading-edge technology to take the risk out by working with the industry. And then maybe we’ll be able to work out some technique where the government could become an anchor tenant, industry could go to Wall Street and finance it. Industry will take
the risk and the government will benefit in the long run. We may get a better system that way. m not saying that’s the way it will be, but we have to have a new way of thinking at NASA.
The object of the space program is not to employ people to work on the space program. The object of the space program is to catalyze America’s future. And if we could do it by having private corporations taking over this function from NASA after we helped work with them on technology risk reduction, that’s a much better solution. I’m not in favor of keeping going back to the Congress and the American people and saying, “Give me more money.”
MR. KLEIN: This questioner says you say NASA is loved outside Washington, but you also say most people think the space station budget is $200 &1/2billion&3/4 to $300 billion. Are these the same peopl (Laughter.)
MR. GOLDIN: I didn’t — no, no. (Laughter.) I don’t think I said space station. I said the space budget.
MR. KLEIN: Right.
MR. GOLDIN: Most American people just have that sense that that’s the value of the space budget. I don’t think they understand the connectivity. But no, I found most people seem very, very positive about that. And, in fact, when I explain to them that the space budget is not $200 &1/2billion&3/4 to $300 billion a year, the commitment of their support goes way up because they worry at that level it’s not affordable, and I agree with them. So it’s a question of communication with the American public.
MR. KLEIN: There are those who argue that we went to the moon and we found there wasn’t anything there; that’s why we haven’t gone back in 25 years. This questioner wants to know what did we learn from the moon rocks?
MR. GOLDIN: We learned a number of things from the moon rocks. Let me give you one that comes to mind. We learned that the moon rocks have absorbed a large quantity of helium-3, which is a gas that comes off from the sun. And it has thetential, if we could make a controlled thermonuclear reaction with helium-3, to have almost no radioactive waste. Twenty-five thousand pounds of helium-3 could supply the United States with power for a year. But that’s decades away.
We found out about the mineral content of the moon. We found out that the moon is a very seismically stable location. If we decide as a nation to build an observatory to image a star, a planet around a nearby star, the place we would probably do it is the moon. Apollo helped us understand that. When this country is ready — you know, NASA is only as strong as the American will. We don’t lead America; America tells us where they want to go.
We have the capability to go as high and as far as America wants us to go. If America wants us to go back to the moon, to image a planet and do spectrascopic analysis to see if there’s water vapor, oxygen, nitrogen, carbon dioxide out of equilibrium in that environment, we could do it. That is fundamental.
We could go to Mars — if the Americans want us to do it — to look for signs of subsurface water, but first America has to decide what it wants.
And we’ve kicked off a strategic plan. We’re going to communicate with America and see what they want, but we learned a lot from the moon, but not nearly enough.
MR. KLEIN: Would you consider a reduction in the space station’s annual budget and a delay in its deployment to be an accessible alternative to cancellation of either the Cassini Saturn probe or the advance x-ray astronomic facilities, the choice Senator Mikulski suggested two weeks ago?
MR. GOLDIN: I am not ready to concede that we could cancel either the Cassini mission or the AXSAT mission. They’re important.
You say, “Goldin, why are they important?” Because it’s part of the knowledge base that we’re gaining.
I also want to say we’re done redesigning the space station. We want the people to go build it. We’re ready to go build it. We’re ready to go launch it in 1997. If we go reprogram the station one more time, we’re going to lose it. We’ve worked out an arrangement with the Japanese, we’ve worked out an arrangement with the Europeans. How long is America going to keep going in this cycle?
The space station is not about jobs and accountants working on the program, it’s about building hardware. We’ve built 25,000 — we’re going to build 25,000 pounds of hardware this year. That’s a first. For 10 years, we’ve put thousands of pounds of paper, we had thousands of people traveling all over the country, we programmed and reprogrammed. We do not want to redesign the space station one more time. I don’t want to do it.
We’re talking about $300 million. I have a fiduciary responsibility to the American people, just not to NASA employees. We’ve got to find the money to solve the problem.
We’ve cut 30 percent out of our budget in two years. Are we going to be a money sink or a source of inspiration? We’ve got to deal with these issues, and I’m not feeling comfortable and I understand Senator Mikulski’s very difficult position. We cannot keep looking at NASA as a money sink, and we will not change the schedule for the space station unless there are some extenuating circumstances I don’t know about.
MR. KLEIN: Well, that brings up another point which I was going to get to later, but it seems like you’ve made it pretty clear here. If Congress kills the space station, will you be inclined to leave NASA? (Laughter)
MR. GOLDIN: I’ll have to think about the situation when it comes. I don’t believe that Congress will kill the space station, but if the space station is canceled, I’ll tell you one thing, I’m going to go home and cry about the future of America.
MR. KLEIN: This questioner wants to know is NASA’s investment in Lewis and Clark fair to the companies that are investing their own money to enter the same market?
MR. GOLDIN: Not only is it fair, but it’s wonderful. We ran an open competition. That’s what life is all about. People responded to that open competition, and now two companies won and they’re going to do something.
In the limit, would you like NASA to say, “We have pushed technology, but we’re so afraid that someone’s going to complain. Let’s cancel the program”? This is what our country has come. We get a little too much whining and crying.
Now, here we have a program with a satellite Lewis. It has 384 spectral bands. Let me tell you what that means: You can look at 384 different colors.
One company, TRW, is going to launch that satellite for $59 million. They’re going to design it, develop it, test it, build it, launch it, pay for the launch vehicle, and give us one year on-orbit operations for $59 million. I think they’re going to invest something like about $50 million of their own resources in that.
We have another proposal to do something else. Let me give you a reference point. LANDSAT. LANDSAT has seven bands. Seven, not 384. LANDSAT is launched on a very large launch vehicle that costs a good fraction of a hundred million &1/2dollars&3/4, not $12 million. LANDSAT cost $750 million.
Why does America have to lag the rest of the world when everyone is worried about who jockeys for what position. NASA is going to take risks, NASA’s going to be on the cutting edge, and I’m tired of the whining and crying. America first.
MR. KLEIN: This questioner wants to know why have you not made Clementine a NASA program, and do you support the Delta Clipper efforts? You might want to explain what those things are for our television audience.
MR. GOLDIN: Sure. Delta Clipper is one of the most imaginative programs that this nation came up with for access to space, and the ballistic missile defense organization was shepherding this program through till they ran out of money. I will say that NASA put its money where its mouth is and this administrator came up with money to save that program. We are enthusiastic about it, and now the DOD is going to perform a number of tests to complete the test series on the Delta Clipper to prove feasibility of the model they built, and we’re working in cooperation with thepartment of Defense to come up with a program that could help make this technology a reality and cut the cost of access to space and make the reliability much higher.
With regards to Clementine, this is this very small little satellite that was built and launched for about $70 million and it went into orbit about the moon. It mapped the complete moon. This is a wonderful program, and we got the results and now it’s time to go on to the next task.
The purpose of Clementine is not to perpetuate an organization of people that worked on it. I salute them. In fact, NASA was the only organization to recognize them with special awards. But what we are doing is, rather than keeping Clementine going as a living organism, we’re having discussions with the DOD to see if there’s another joint mission that’s as bold as Clementine that could be done for low cost that could just push back the frontiers of ignorance. If we could do that, we’ll work that jointly with the Department of Defense.
Again, it makes no difference where it gets done as long as the American people benefit.
MR. KLEIN: This questioner says recently NASA has funded approximately $500 million over five years on composite materials technology, but only a fraction on the metallic technologies. Considering aerospace is the nation’s number one export market, should not the R&D be more balanced?
MR. GOLDIN: I don’t know the exact numbers, but I can tell you under the hypersonics program, NASA and the DOD came up with just trailblazing advances in titanium technologies and in metal matrix technologies that are now going to be used by surgeons to make better hip joints for people while we’re also figuring out how to use it in automobiles.
We have a broad range of technologies, and let me explain what “composite” is. “Composite” is where you take these little fibers of graphite and mix them with some epoxy glue and you can make fishing rods and tennis rackets. That’s one form of a composite, and people have better fishing rods and tennis rackets because NASA decided to go into space and do bold and noble things.
But we also are working on composites that operate at much higher temperatures, where we take ceramics that could operate at 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit, and when you operate that high a temperature for a combuster in a jet engine or an automobile engine, you don’t have very high levels of oxides or nitrogen which give cause to the tremendous pollution problems that we have.
NASA, starting about a year and a half ago, pulled from behind and we are now leading the world in the fibers to use. We’re using silicon carbide fibers and we’re making ceramic composites that are the size of this lectern here. Think about it — a ceramic that won’t crack that’s this big that operates at 3,000 degrees. If we’re not working on the cutting edge of technology — I don’t know if that is. I believe that that is.
Now, I will check for that question in terms of the exact dollars, but my sense is we’re probably doing the right thing, but I’ll get an answer to them in detail.
MR. KLEIN: It was on the 20th anniversary of the moon landing that President Bush announced that the United States should be back to the moon by the turn of the century and on to Mars early in the next century using the space station as the construction point for the probe to Mars.
Five years later, has anything been done on that goal, or have we just been scrabbling to maintain where we are?
MR. GOLDIN: Well, let me provide the context for that statement. We were still at Cold War with the Russians, and the object was, just like with Apollo, to beat the Russians to Mars. And in the plan we had, even at the lowest cost, it was a quarter of a trillion dollars, and it was going to take 30 years to get to Mars. The announcement was in 1989, and the objective was to get to Mars in 19 — 2019. That was a noble approach.
The Berlin Wall came down.
I think that there are barriers to going to Mars. First, we have to figure out how people can live and work in space, because it’s debilitating. You lose bone mass and muscle mass. Your white blood cells don’t have mobility. Your neural connections change. You don’t generate red blood cells. We have to figure out that.
Secondly, we no longer want to go to Mars to beat the Russians. We have to figure out how we can work and play well with the Russians and the other countries — France and Germany, Canada and Japan, and all across Europe. We don’t want to go to Mars and have America plant the flag in one spot and then have the Russians go to Mars and plant it in another spot. We’ll be on the verge of Star Wars II. So that’s the second condition have.
There is a third condition. We cannot have a program that does bold and noble things that takes 30 years. We’ve got to do it in eight years or less.
I had a long talk with Carl Sagan about this. Anything more than two presidential terms is too long.
And, finally, because there’s got to be continuity, otherwise we’ll redesign and design and redesign, and we’ll be accountants, not engineers and scientists, and we have to do it for an order of magnitude less money, and that’s what we’re working on now. We’re not going to brute force it. We owe it to the American public to give them the tools — that’s NASA’s job. I believe when we successfully launch the space station, we will have figured out how to build fuel depots on Mars with robots for the methane and oxygen. We’ll be able to have all this sitting ready, and then, if we work together with other nations, we could do it for an order of magnitude less money, we could do it in eight years, but we’re not yet ready, so it would be irresponsible today — it’s a macho thing, but it would irresponsible today to say, “Let’s go to Mars.” NASA is going to be there.
Let me tell you, despite the rumors, the brilliance of NASA has always been there. The NASA employees are freed up and they are working on these brilliant ideas. We’re ready to go to Mars when America is.
MR. KLEIN: We are about out of time. It’s been certainly educational. I’d like to present you with a certificate of appreciation for appearing here, and with a National Press Club mug, which I would like to have filled with moondust and you can bring it back to me. (Laughter)
MR. GOLDIN: How about Mars water?
MR. KLEIN: Mars water would even be better. (Laughter and applause)
Just a reminder that audio and video tapes and transcripts are available by calling 1-800-500-9911.
Andw for the last question. Are you ready for this?
If it had been you and not Neil Armstrong who had set foot on the moon, what would you have said? (Laughter)
That puts you on the spot.
MR. GOLDIN: This a wonderful thing for humanity, and that I am unbelievably proud to be selected as the person to represent the people of Planet Earth on the moon. (Applause)
MR. KLEIN: Thank you very much, and that concludes our program for the day. We hope you all will be back with us. We have Donna Shalala coming up and a big line-up next week.