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U.S.-RUSSIAN COOPERATION IN HUMAN SPACEFLIGHT, PART IV: THE WHITE HOUSE PERSPECTIVE ON THE INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION'S PROBLEMS AND SOLUTIONS
WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 5, 1998
House of Representatives,
Committee on Science,
Washington, DC.
The Committee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:03 a.m., in room 2318, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. F. James Sensenbrenner, Jr., Chairman of the Committee, presiding.
Chairman SENSENBRENNER. The Committee will come to order.
Before we begin the hearing, I will digress for a moment to recognize the departure of Mike Rodemeyer, who has served with distinction on the staff of the Committee for the past 14 years, on the Democratic side, I might add.
Our loss is OSTP's gain. I would note, however, that should it become necessary for the Committee to serve a process on OSTP, Dr. Moore, please feel free to send us Mike to answer the Committee's interrogatories since I'd like to return the favor of some of the pointed questions he has provided the Democratic members over the years, particularly when Republican Administrations were in office.
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[Laughter.]
For some time, we have wanted an honest and constructive discussion with the White House about the International Space Station's troubles. Today, we're going to have it.
I won't rehash all of the problems that the program is experiencing. By now, we are familiar with them. The question before the Federal Government is what we can do to fix them and to prevent them from recurring. There are a few proposals before us.
First, we reviewed the Cost Assessment and Validation Task Force report and received testimony from its Chairman, Jay Chabrow, on two separate occasions. The Task Force determined that Russian nonperformance was the prime threat to the program today. It also concluded that the International Space Station program was underfunded, particularly in the Fiscal Year 1999 budget request.
Insufficient funding caused NASA to defer work and to perform inadequate contingency planning. The Chabrow report recommended additional resources to achieve the baseline program. It also recommended implementing a comprehensive risk mitigation strategy to deal with Russia's inability to meet its obligations and to provide propulsion and logistic capabilities, namely the Service Module and the Progress resupply vehicles.
At our June 24th hearing, we learned that NASA fundamentally concurred with the Chabrow report's diagnosis of the Station's problems, which the General Accounting Office also seemed to confirm.
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Last week, NASA briefed the Office of the Vice President, the Office of Management and Budget, and the Office of Science and Technology Policy. I requested some materials.
NASA recommended a robust plan to fix the International Space Station's problems. The Agency wants to provide Russia with funding to ensure the launch of the Service Module and to continue operating Russia's mission control, which the International Space Station depends upon for its first few months of life.
NASA also recommended investments to address our long-term dependence upon Russia for a successful Space Station program. These includes modifying the Space Shuttle to reduce our short-term reliance on Russia's Progress spacecraft and initiating a U.S. propulsion module that would eliminate our long-term dependence on Russia. We have been given a ball-park cost estimate of $510 million for these actions.
Today we are hearing the White House response to the recommendations of the Cost Assessment and Validation Task Force. From the prepared statements, it is clear that the White House concurs with the decision to modify the Shuttle and to make greater use of it to replace some of the Progress vehicles. That does not solve the problem of our dependence upon Russia, but it may be a prudent next step.
Unfortunately, that's where the White House plan ends. The White House did not adopt the recommendation of the Cost Assessment and Validation Task Force or NASA to initiate a program to solve our long-term dependence on the Russians. Under the White House's limited plan, Russia's problems will continue to plague this program.
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The White House did not accept the Chabrow report's conclusion that the program continues to be underfunded. Thus, the Administration will not alter its Fiscal Year 1999 budget request. Instead, the White House testimony makes it clear that if additional funds prove necessary—and from experience over the past 3 years, we know they will—the White House will continue to rob NASA's other programs to pay for Russia's failures in the International Space Station. The Administration may—and I emphasize may—consider additional steps in Fiscal Year 2000, which doesn't begin for another 14 months.
I think we are all anxious to hear why the White House disagrees with the Cost Assessment and Advisory Task Force, why it rejected NASA's recommendations to address our long-term dependence upon Russia, why it will not provide the funds necessary to fix these problems, why we should go through another year of ad hoc budget shuffles, and why it thinks declining to address these issues now in Fiscal Year 1999 won't result in bigger problems later.
Because we are anxious to hear answers to these questions, I want to thank the Office of Management and Budget, the Office of Science and Technology Policy, and NASA for appearing before the Committee this morning. We look forward to your testimony.
Now, before swearing in the witnesses, I have a little bit of housekeeping on the part of both sides of the aisle in this Committee to address to Mr. Lew.
We have had recurring late arrival of testimony from NASA, in particular, but sometimes from other federal agencies as well, when we are holding hearings on very critical issues. The Committee rules say that testimony is to arrive 48 hours in advance of the hearing. That is to give the members and the Committee staff the time to review the testimony and to draft any pertinent questions to ask based upon the testimony.
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Usually, we get the testimony about 10 p.m. the night before the hearing because of late approval by OMB. That's after all the staff has gone home, and we get them here early in the morning to try to review this, but sometimes when we have morning hearings, that's inadequate time.
This time you were a little bit better. We got it at noon yesterday, but that still does not comply with the 48-hour rule. If we are to do our job, Mr. Lew, we are going to have to have that testimony on time. I hope the late arrival of testimony because OMB can't get its act together and send testimony in will not result in me having to postpone a hearing to a future date so that there can be adequate preparation by the members of the Committee and the staff, which will screw up everybody's schedule. And OMB will be to blame for that.
So I hope you will receive this message, and that I won't have to give it again.
Mr. LEW. If I may, I apologize for any inconvenience late clearance has caused the Committee. I assure it causes us as much inconvenience as it causes you, so this is a problem we share.
The clearance of testimony is done as quickly as we can. We know that it is inconvenient to you when it comes late. We made every effort to get it here early yesterday, and we will continue to work to try to cooperate with you.
Chairman SENSENBRENNER. Well, 48 hours is the same amount of time up the street as it is here on Capitol Hill. I would hope that you would be respectful of the role that Committee members and the Committee staff have to play in order to put together intelligent hearings.
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If I really wanted to be mean this morning, I would have banged the gavel and walked out and told you all to be back here at 10 a.m. tomorrow irrespective of what your schedule is. I am not going to do that, but I may have to do that in the future if the late clearance and the late arrival of the testimony continues to be the habit that it seems to be.
Would each of the witnesses please stand. Excuse me, I now recognize the gentleman from California, Mr. Brown.
Mr. BROWN of California. Let me thank the Chairman for calling this hearing. Let me say first of all that the Chairman has said very little that I don't agree very solidly with. He has been assiduous in his pursuit of action with regard to the problems of the Space Station; and while I have sometimes tried to be Mr. Nice Guy in terms of protecting the Administration, I am very, very deeply concerned that we are not taking the proper steps to assure ourselves that the Space Station will come not on schedule and within budget, but a little bit less behind schedule and over budget than it is at the present time.
I have pointed out consistently over the years that NASA has been in the forefront of meeting the challenges of doing its job, and a very good job, at a lesser cost. I have pointed with alarm, as they say, to the declining budget of NASA. I recall very well that the present Administrator was hired by the Bush Administration to begin the process of reducing NASA's cost and schedule problems and to change the culture of the agency. In my opinion, he has done a very, very good job.
But that good job has not been met with the kind of response that a good job normally is, which is some indication, more than token, that the good job is being rewarded. In fact, every time he does a good job, or the agency does a good job, the budget gets cut.
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I read your statement and I don't see any indication that that situation is going to change in the near term, and I am going to harp on that very strongly in the future. I might even have to quit being Mr. Nice Guy and try to emulate Mr. Sensenbrenner and be Mr. Nasty Guy. Although he does such a much better job than me, that I am not sure I could compare with him.
[Laughter.]
In any event, we are pretty much in sync on these issues and I just wanted to give you that indication. It is not a partisan matter; it is a matter of fulfilling our commitments. While I agree with the Administration as to the need for those commitments and the general thrust of what we are doing, I think it hasn't been backed up adequately in the budgetary process, and I will remind you of that frequently.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman SENSENBRENNER. Now, will each of our three witnesses stand to take the oath.
Please raise your right hand. Do you and each of you solemnly swear that the testimony you are about to give before this Committee shall be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God?
Mr. LEW. I do.
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Mr. MOORE. I do.
Mr. GOLDIN. I do.
Chairman SENSENBRENNER. Let the record show that each of the witnesses answered in the affirmative.
The first witness this morning will be the Honorable Jacob Lew, Director Designate of the Office of Management and Budget. Mr. Lew.
Also, we would like to ask each of the witnesses to summarize their statements in 5 minutes or so, and without objections, the written statements of each one of the witnesses will be printed in the record at the proper point.
TESTIMONY OF JACOB J. LEW, DIRECTOR DESIGNATE, OFFICE OF MANAGEMENT AND BUDGET
Mr. LEW. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and members of the Committee. I appreciate the Committee's cooperation in scheduling this hearing. In fact, as of Friday, I am the Director of OMB; I was confirmed on Friday, and the Committee's cooperation to schedule this so that it fit into my schedule was very much appreciated.
I am pleased to be before the Committee today to talk about the Space Station. The International Space Station remains one of our highest priorities. We are committed to developing a research facility in space so that we can promote human research in space. We are also committed to cooperation with our international partners generally, and Russia, in particular.
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The continued Russian involvement in the program has important benefits to our country, as evidenced by the success of NASA's cooperation on the Mir, and it will be continued.
NASA is about to begin the exciting next phase of the program, assembly in orbit of the International Space Station. Just to look back, when the Administration considered in 1993, the merits of continuing U.S. participation in the Space Station program, over 10 years and $10 billion had been spent. Yet we were many years away from launching anything.
We are now only a few months away. The assembly will be launched and it will be assembled in space. We and our international partners are on the verge of seeing the concept of the International Space Station become a reality.
The International Space Station program is one of the most ambitious research programs we have ever undertaken. It has been complicated technically; it has been complicated financially. In some ways, the cooperation of 15 nations is unprecedented on a project of this sort. It will take over 40 launches by the United States and Russia to fully assemble the Space Station.
As I indicated in my written statement, given the scope of this project, it was only reasonable to expect that there be complications, and as the Committee knows very well, there have been complications.
But I'd like to make clear that the complications are in no way solely because of the relationship between the United States and Russia on this project. We have had reserves for the Space Station, many of which have been expended, which made it possible to remain on schedule. Further, we have taken steps to provide additional funding in both 1997 and 1998.
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We provided a total of $250 million within NASA's budget to address concerns related to the Russian delays. But I want to point out that in 1999, we added $1.2 billion within NASA's budget to address primarily domestic issues concerning development of problems with contractors and to provide for a U.S.-developed crew return vehicle.
We share your concern about the Russian economy and costs in the program. And I don't point out the other complications by way of saying that we should look the other way when it comes to complications involving the Russians. I merely point it out to say that this has been an enormous undertaking, a complex undertaking, and we are very proud of the way we have worked with Dan Goldin and NASA to manage this program, and with this Committee so that we could continue to make the kind of progress that we share this Committee's goal should continue.
The Administration has spent considerable effort addressing the Russian situation at the highest levels. Just in the last several weeks, the Vice President continued his discussions with Russian leaders. In September, the President will be in Russia and this will be on the agenda as well. We have been given assurances that there will be a very serious effort made to meet the commitment.
When we approach the question of contingency plans, I think we need to be clear that we do not share the view that some of you may have that the time has come to say that there is no more hope for the Russians to fulfill their commitment.
On the other hand, we have been very careful to do contingency planning on a year-by-year basis to deal with the issues as they arise.
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I'd like to depart from my prepared remarks and perhaps the address the issue that you, Mr. Chairman, raised in your opening remarks, because I think that is the essence in some ways of what this hearing is about.
We haven't rejected the Chabrow Commission reports. I think Administrator Goldin has testified before this Committee that there are many aspects of that report that we are concerned about and that we are taking a look at, and in fact, as you noted in your opening statement, some of which we have already agreed to address.
I think the real question is when and how. We are taking steps now to deal with the situation in Fiscal Year 1999 that we feel needs to be dealt with in Fiscal Year 1999. We don't feel it is appropriate to make the ultimate judgment on where we will be in Fiscal Year 2000 and in future years.
There is a very fluid situation right now in Russia, much more broadly than just the Space Station. And there are large international discussions that will continue to go on outside of the context of the Space Station.
We are not sitting here confidently saying that there won't be any problem. What we are saying is that we are dealing right now with the immediate problem, and we will continue to discuss with NASA as a team whether the situation changes in the fall, as we look towards planning the Year 2000 Fiscal Year budget.
I say that not by means of predicting that we are going to reach a conclusion or by predicting that we won't reach a conclusion regarding the future ability of the Russians to meet their commitment. I say it by way of indicating that we feel that we have dealt with the issues as they have arisen and we expect to continue to do the same, but not prematurely, not before the issue arises in a form that it has to be addressed.
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I'd like to talk for a moment about our budget strategy. As you know, in October 1997, the NASA chartered the Cost Assessment and Validation Task Force. The Task Force report, published just a few months ago, concluded that the program funding and schedule estimates were overly optimistic in light of the complexity.
As I indicated, and as NASA has indicated before the Committee, we have already addressed some of the immediate concerns. We believe that the Fiscal Year 1999 budget request is sufficient at this time to address the Fiscal Year 1999 demands with respect to the Russian situation, as well as domestic concerns raised in that report.
To address these needs, NASA needs the full funding for the President's Fiscal Year 1999 budget request. As I think you know, we are now in the middle of the appropriations process, and to date, the full funding has not been provided. There are other priorities of the Committees, the Appropriations Committees, that have received greater funding. We know that we need the full funding that we have requested; we are working very hard in the appropriations process to get full funding, and we hope that this Committee will support our efforts to get full funding for the Administration's requests.
Although I know that many of you would like to see a detailed plan today, I would like to reiterate that we feel it is important not to act in haste. We have experience, and have suggested that watching the situation, giving time for the situation to develop, often pays off.
As one example, in 1995, NASA evaluated a variety of U.S. options designed to provide a temporary backup for the Russian service module. At the time, the cost estimates were $500 to $750 million. As the Committee knows, NASA did not pursue those options, and as a result, it pursued alternative options which saved considerable money and dealt with the problem.
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That's the way this NASA Administrator has worked. We have worked closely with him to run the program so that we can do more, sometimes with less. And if I may again, in response to a comment that you made in your opening remarks, Mr. Chairman, and the Ranking Member echoed, we do not at all feel that the budgets of the last several years have punished NASA in any way for success.
Quite the contrary, we are very proud of NASA's success. We all know that the dramatic reduction in cost of a number of the missions have given NASA the ability to accomplish quite a lot with declining resources over a period of time, and now with stable resources.
The thing that has been important to us in working with NASA—and I know that Dan Goldin has said this to the Committee in the past—is we don't view the NASA budget as a 1-year budget. NASA, more than almost any other—budget that we deal with, requires us to talk about multi-year commitments and an ability to keep multi-year efforts on track.
We are very proud of the relationship we have developed with NASA over the last several years to look ahead, to be candid with each other about what the needs are, to forecast those needs and to manage together to accomplish the goals, which have been very, very dramatic accomplishments, and we think, very bold goals.
In conclusion, I'd like to say a word about an issue that I know the Committee has been concerned about. And that is when there is a need to look for additional funding for the Space Station, where do we go? We have taken the view that there were sufficient funds within the NASA budget to deal with some of the shortfalls. You have addressed the question of a little bit of carryovers.
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We have to keep in mind the size of this program compared to the size of other research, which is important to us and it's important to this Committee. Very small increases or decreases in the NASA budget, in the Space Station budget, really are the entirety of the funding of many of our common priorities in basic science and in other areas.
We need to be careful as we make these judgments that we make sound, balanced policy across all of our research objectives. We do not believe it is an option to just pretend that there are no limits. There is a balanced budget agreement. We have lived within that budget agreement. We want to work with the Congress to continue living within that budget agreement. It has done a world of good for the American economy and the American people.
The President is committed to saving the surplus until we fix Social Security first. We are not going to turn to the surplus for our highest priorities or your highest priorities. We feel it is important to wait. That means we are working within tight constraints and any resources that we provide come from somewhere.
We have made an effort over the years to work closely with NASA so that we could pursue all of our objectives in a balanced way and make judgments in a balanced way. And we have tried to work with this Committee to do the same. We look forward to continuing to do so. We think that there is a lot of exciting developments that we are on the verge of seeing become a reality in the Space Station. I look forward, after my colleagues make their statements, to answer any questions you may have.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Lew follows:]
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"The Official Committee record contains additional material here."
Chairman SENSENBRENNER. Thank you, Mr. Lew.
Mr. Moore.
TESTIMONY OF DUNCAN T. MOORE, ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR FOR TECHNOLOGY, OFFICE OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY POLICY
Mr. MOORE. Thank you. Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member Brown, members of the Committee, it is a pleasure to appear again to discuss the International Space Station.
Over the past several months, the Administration has been working closely with NASA to evaluate the CAV recommendations and the status of Russian contributions. For some time, we have had a contingency plan defined with incremental steps to mitigate risks associated with potential future Russian shortfalls.
The Administration supports specific measures that NASA intends to make to provide a contingency capability against further Russian delays and to address potential costs and scheduled risks in the program. In support of this approach, NASA is prepared to fund startup actions required to modify the Space Shuttle orbiters in Fiscal Year 1999, within the Agency's full request, to enhance their capabilities to reboost the Space Station, and partially mitigate potential future Progress shortfalls.
We seek the support of Congress in ensuring the President's full Fiscal Year 1999 request is appropriated as we proceed down this path. Over the next several months, we will be actively engaged in discussions with NASA about budgetary solutions in the President's Fiscal Year 2000 budget. NASA's plan, which the Administration supports, is based on the following four elements.
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One, on-time launch of the service module and safe deorbit of the Mir. NASA estimates that the assembly of the service module flight article is over 95 percent complete. The flight article was successfully shipped in early June to Energia Enterprise to begin the final assembly, checkout, and testing prior to shipment to the RSA launch facility.
In 1998, the Russian government has budgeted for, but has not provided all of the funds needed to make this commitment. RSA continues to report that despite the shortfall in government funding, technical progress is being made with a goal of meeting the planned Service Module launch in April of 1999.
The Administration is engaged with the leadership of the government of Russia in focused discussions about the impact of additional delays in making funds available to RSA. NASA has engaged RSA in more detailed discussions for the purpose of ensuring the timely delivery of the service module, the safe deorbit of the Mir, and the planned crew and logistics support.
As the Committee knows, NASA initiated step one of its contingency plan with the development of the Interim Control Module as a potential interim replacement for the Service Module. Since the implementation of this plan began, NASA has maintained that its preference would be to proceed with the Service Module due to significant costs and schedule of implications.
Current conditions do not warrant launching the ICM in place of the Service Module. Development of the ICM will continue as a backup propellant vehicle in case of potential future Russian shortfalls in delivering Progress logistics flights on time.
The U.S. Government has made clear to the Russian government that the Service Module is the highest priority near-term Russian contribution to the ISS. The Russian government has indicated that the scarce RSA resources will be focused immediately on that element, while still enabling the safe and timely deorbit of Mir.
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These priorities have been communicated directly by the President and the Vice President. Russian President Yeltsin and Prime Minister Kiriyenko have expressed their commitment to both of these.
Number two, options for providing backup to Progress resupply launches. Under the current planning for ISS, Russia is responsible for all of the ISS reboost, propulsion resupply, and attitude control, which is accomplished through the delivery of propellant to the service module and the Russian Science Power Platform using Russian Progress vehicles.
The RSA has indicated it will be able to afford within the revised, approved budget only partial funding of long-lead items for the future Soyuz and Progress vehicles. To address this shortfall, the second part of our strategy is for NASA to use existing Shuttle reboost capability and reallocate funding to develop an enhanced Shuttle capability to meet a significant portion of the Station reboost requirements.
For the near-term, through assembly complete, NASA could replace the reboost capability of several planned Progress vehicles by using existing Shuttle reboost capabilities. The Shuttle reboost capability uses the orbiters' reaction control system thrusters. This provides flexibility at no additional cost to the United States.
NASA has been given approval to proceed with this plan, which will be accomplished as an additional maneuver for each space flight to the Station with no impact on assembly sequence.
The capability of the orbiters to provide reboost could be enhanced by modifying the fleet to allow exchange of propellants from between the forward and aft reaction control system tanks.
The Administration has approved the reallocation of Fiscal Year 1997 Russian Program Assurance funds to accomplish this interconnect modification. NASA intends to phase this modification in over several years, as the orbiters undergo regularly scheduled maintenance.
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In my testimony, I have also outlined four other long-term contingency options, including use of the Shuttle, the use of the European and Japanese vehicles, and a technical definition study that NASA recently undertook for a propulsion module.
A formal industry cost estimate is expected later this month and will be evaluated by NASA in early September. A decision whether to pursue any of these additional options will be considered during the formulation of the Fiscal Year 2000 budget.
Three, explore the Soyuz as CRV gap-filler. The RSA is committed to provide Soyuz crew return vehicles for up to a three-person crew on ISS. When the ISS will be capable of supporting a crew of six, as planned in late 2002, the United States is responsible for providing crew return capabilities for all additional crew members.
However, the U.S CRV will not be available until 2003, at the earliest. To bridge the gap between the six-person crew and the expected CRV availability, NASA is exploring the use of additional Soyuz vehicles to meet our own obligations. Approximately two to four Soyuz vehicles will be required to cover the gap.
Four, address urgent risk elements identified by the CAV. The CAV report identified the most urgent risk elements as the Multi-Element Integration Testing, software and hardware integration, and training. NASA agreed with these findings and is moving to implement mitigation activities within their current budget.
Revision D to the ISS assembly sequence adds 4 months to the current schedule and mitigates the risk associated with these elements within NASA's planned budget.
In conclusion, NASA and the international partners have made tremendous progress over the last 5 years in making the Space Station a reality. Later this year, the first elements will be launched. While we've made much progress, the program faces significant challenges in the coming year.
The Administration intends to work with both this Committee and the VA–HUD Appropriations Subcommittee to determine how best to fund the strategy described beyond the Fiscal Year 1999. Consequently, NASA will spend the next few months carefully evaluating the estimates and assessing alternatives and the urgency for making these changes. The results of these efforts will be reflected in the Fiscal Year 2000 budget. Thank you.
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[The prepared statement of Mr. Moore follows:]
Offset folios 1332 to 1335 insert here.
Chairman SENSENBRENNER. Thank you, Mr. Moore.
Mr. Goldin.
TESTIMONY OF DANIEL S. GOLDIN, ADMINISTRATOR, NATIONAL AERONAUTICS AND SPACE ADMINISTRATION
Mr. GOLDIN. Mr. Chairman, I am honored to be here today, accompanied by Jack Lew, the Director of the Office of Management and Budget, and Dr. Duncan Moore, the Associate Director of Technology of the Office of Science and Technology Policy.
As members of this Administration, we are pleased to present this Committee with an appraisal of the hardware and budget status of the International Space Station.
Let me begin by expressing my appreciation on behalf of the Administration of the entire NASA team for the overwhelming vote of confidence the House of Representatives gave on July 29th to the International Space Station Program.
I believe that vote, and the sound support for the ISS given to us by the Senate and the Administration reflects a conviction that the ISS is a critical investment in our Nation's future. The launch of the first major element, Sunrise, the FGB control module, is approximately 3 months away. Launch of the second major element, Unity, the node, is less than 4 months away. The half-billion-dollar Italian multipurpose logistics module has just arrived at the Kennedy Space Center.
Next month, the Canadian Space Agency will deliver the $1 billion, 60-foot long, 3,700-pound robotic arm to Kennedy. The Service Module is now 98 percent complete, and is undergoing final integration and testing at the Energia Plant in Russia. The International Space Station, in spite of all the problems we are having, is coming together and soon will be a reality.
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However, as the Committee knows, there are valid concerns about the Russian government's financial situation and the ability of the Russians to fully meet their commitments. The Administration is fully committed to the continuing involvement of Russia as a vital member of the ISS partnership.
The Russian Space Agency has made extraordinary progress despite shortfalls in funding. But it is clear that the timely completion of this important international project is at risk should the shortage of Russian funding continue.
The Administration and NASA have laid out a comprehensive plan which would allow us to move the ISS program forward, maintain the Russian partnership based on their economic ability, and achieve greater U.S. backup capability over the next several years.
The most pressing need now is the completion and launch of the Russian Service Module as planned, to provide the initial life-support capability, propulsion, and attitude control for the International Space Station. To assure a timely launch of the Service Module, NASA is presently engaged with RSA to understand their fiscal situation and define appropriate steps.
At this Committee's direction, the Administration and NASA are implementing contingency plans to continue assembly of the ISS despite further delays in Russian contributions. We are completing development of the Interim Control Module and have just initiated two additional activities: the modification of the Shuttle reaction control system to facilitate the periodic reboost of the ISS, and a contractor study of a U.S. propulsion module which would provide both attitude control and reboost capability.
I previously testified before this Committee in June about the NASA response to the recent independent review and assessment costs, budgets and partnership performance. NASA agrees with the key risks cited in the report and is taking steps to address the most urgent risks. We are assessing the need for additional steps and their funding implications as we develop the Fiscal Year 2000 budget this fall.
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Thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today. I look forward to your questions.
[The prepared statement and attachments of Mr. Goldin follow:]
"The Official Committee record contains additional material here."
Chairman SENSENBRENNER. Thank you very much, Mr. Goldin.
Before we get to questions, I would like to ask unanimous consent that a NASA paper entitled ''Russian Issues Briefing of the Office of the Vice President, the Office of Management and Budget, and the Office of Science and Technology Policy,'' dated July 30, 1998, be inserted into the record.
Is there objection? Hearing none, so ordered.
We will be operating under the 5-minute rule and the Chair recognizes himself for 5 minutes.
Russian failures have cost the American taxpayer at least $2 billion, including a $121 million Interim Control Module. Now NASA says another $500 million is needed for a propulsion module and Shuttle modifications to replace the functions of Russian hardware which may or may not ever arrive. And NASA has recommended to OMB that the United States should pay Russia to complete and sustain all Russian contributions as are necessary to remove Russia from the critical path over the long run.
Since the independent and objective Chabrow report also recommended investments to end long-term dependence upon the Russians, Mr. Chabrow testified that NASA's Human Space Flight account is insufficient to do this, why won't the White House support what everyone else agrees needs to be done?
Mr. Lew.
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Mr. LEW. Mr. Chairman, as I tried to indicate in my opening remarks, the question of how we project continued Russian involvement is a complicated one. I think that contingency planning does call for looking at worse cases, but decisions have to be made not on worst case scenarios, they have to be made based on the best information we have at the moment.
The best information we have at the moment does not lead us to make the judgment that we need to jump to the conclusion that the Russians will not be able to meet any of their commitments. First of all——
Chairman SENSENBRENNER. What leads you to believe that?
Mr. LEW. If I might, Mr. Chairman. First of all, I think Mr. Goldin has testified at this Committee, and I know in our discussions, we have talked at great length. We couldn't be at the point we are at in terms of launching the Space Station without the knowledge that we've gotten and the work we've done together with the Russians. The Russians have been important partners in this project.
Second, just this past month, there were very high level discussions with the Russian government about the ongoing commitment of the Russians. We are not prepared to assume those commitments cannot be met.
Chairman SENSENBRENNER. Mr. Lew, I've been informed that the Vice President brought the matter up with Prime Minister Kiriyenko and said when are the Russians going to provide the Russian Space Agency with money, and the Vice President returned home without a commitment. I have been informed today that Yuri Koptev, the Director of the Russian Space Agency, said that the Russian government isn't going to provide RSA with any money until November or December, which is a long time from now, and that the RSA needs between $50 and $100 million in American dollars by the end of September to stay on schedule. Now, that isn't in your budget submission. That's the up-to-date information that we've gotten.
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Mr. LEW. Mr. Chairman, I have actually discussed with the Vice President his conversations in Russia, and they were substantially more encouraging than that. The details of them, I think have been shared with you. The question is the confidence level that the commitments that were made will be kept.
Chairman SENSENBRENNER. Well, they've broken every other commitment and missed every other deadline they've given us, so what leads us to believe that anything has changed?
Mr. LEW. Well, I think that if you break the issue down, there are really two questions. What are the immediate shortfalls based on our current assessment of the immediate Russian contributions? And I think, as we've indicated, we've responded quite aggressively to the immediate needs.
There is quite another question, the longer-term assumptions that one makes. We are not prepared to make the assumption that the commitments that have just very recently been underscored cannot be relied on.
Clearly, we are planning for contingencies that go either way. We have indicated that. We understand that there is a very delicate situation in Russia right now, that with the best of intentions, there are grave difficulties in Russia right now. We are not sitting here saying there is nothing to be worried about.
Quite the contrary, we are saying we are very worried; we are planning short-term to be aggressive about dealing with short-term problems. We are expecting to have discussions based on the information that we have in the fall about what to do in the Fiscal Year 2000 budget.
Chairman SENSENBRENNER. So a short-term problem is that Mr. Koptev needs $50 to $100 million by the end of September to stay on schedule. Where in NASA's budget is the money to do that?
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Mr. LEW. When we are talking about $50 to $100 million, we are in a very different league than when we are talking $500 million or $1 billion or $2 billion. And we have worked with NASA over the past several years to deal with a variety of cost issues, not all of which have to do with the Russians. And we are confident that we can continue to work with NASA to deal with that scale of problem.
Chairman SENSENBRENNER. Okay. But I think some of your numbers are off, Mr. Lew. In both your prepared statement and Dr. Moore's prepared statement, you indicate that if NASA needs additional funding for the Space Station, it would come from the ''$6 billion spent annually in the Human Space Flight account.'' Now, gentlemen, the Fiscal Year 1998 Human Space Flight account was $5.679 billion, and your Fiscal Year 1999 request was $5.511 billion. You've given NASA credit for $800 million that's not in its budget. You know, if you can give NASA that money, I think we can adjourn the hearing because all of these problems are resolved.
Mr. Goldin, would you please hold your hand out so that Mr. Lew can hand you the check.
[Laughter.]
You've got some wrong figures, Mr. Lew. You keep on talking about reducing the Human Space Flight account to deal with issues I just brought up, and when is this going to stop? Because pretty soon we are going to end up having a house of cards collapse.
Mr. LEW. Mr. Chairman, I hope this doesn't become a question of who asked for what, who provided what. I think we worked well together on a bipartisan basis to move this project forward. But I would note that our budget requests for Human Space Flight was $5.511 billion. At the moment, the current mark that's in the VA–HUD Subcommittee out of the House is 5.3. So we have issues. We clearly need to get full funding.
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Second, we have made requests over the last several years for additional funds. We requested in Fiscal Year 1998 a total of $310 million that weren't approved. We have worked with NASA very well to use carryover funds and do other things to meet the immediate challenges.
I don't think the numbers we are talking about in the $50 to $100 million range put us outside of the league of the kinds of things we have been able to deal with well. And I don't say this by way of saying it's because we didn't get $100 million in a supplemental, that we have a problem.
There are lots of puts and takes in this program. We work on a professional, collaborative basis to work it through. I don't think the fact that there may be an immediate cost of $50 to $100 million associated with the current situation in Russia is different in kind than what we have been able to deal with in the past.
Chairman SENSENBRENNER. Well, Mr. Lew, my time is up, but I point out that both your statement and that of Dr. Moore talked about a $6 billion Human Space Flight account, and the Human Space Flight account has been nowhere near close to that for the last several years.
The gentleman from Tennessee, Mr. Gordon.
Mr. GORDON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Let me first add my welcome to the panel, and for your good testimony. Mr. Lew, I want to congratulate you on your new well-deserved position.
Mr. LEW. Thank you very much.
Mr. GORDON. Although you bring a wealth of credentials, I still think it is not unreasonable to assume that you could have a few days to get your feet on the ground and I am going to do that. I am particularly pleased that you recognize and have stated clearly here that you do recognize that there is a bipartisan concern about the Russian situation and the impact it has on us. We don't expect you to have an answer immediately. But you do know and you should know that it is obviously a concern.
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The other thing I am pleased about is your sensitivity to acknowledging that a small increase in the NASA budget can be an enormous decrease in some of the other well-deserved, but smaller funded areas within the budget. And we certainly don't want to see a cannibalization of these good programs for NASA.
So again, congratulations on the new position. I have a lot of confidence in you and your background. Get your feet on the ground and then let's get all this cleaned up. Thank you.
Mr. LEW. Thank you very much.
Chairman SENSENBRENNER. The gentleman from California, Mr. Rohrabacher.
Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Lew, it seems to me that you seem to be missing a fundamental point in our relationship between what is going on between Russia and the United States in this particular program.
The Russians indeed have expertise that we need. There is no doubt about it. Many of us advocated this type of partnership in terms of at least a relationship. What we didn't advocate was a relationship between the Russian government and the United States government. And the approach that your Administration has taken, which I consider to be fatally flawed, is an approach that you are dealing to get this Russian expertise that will help, you are going through a corrupt and incompetent government.
Now, whether or not the Russian government can become honest and efficient in the next year or two, I don't think many of us are waiting for that to happen. That is truly long-term planning.
But to the degree that we have worked with Russian companies and directly with the Russian experts, for example, the FGB came along very well and it was a project, part of the Space Station, that they have done their job because it was a contract between the Russian company and Boeing, the American company, rather than trying to pour further money into the Russian government and hoping that that makes its way through the cotton balls of corruption that tend to soak up all the funds before it gets down to the floor of the factory so these men and women in Russia can produce the technology which is required.
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It seems to me you are not making any change in that policy at all. You are just saying we are going to stick with the Russian government. You are not telling us that you are going to try to continue working with the Russian people and Russian companies. You are sticking with a failed policy, isn't that correct?
Mr. LEW. Actually, our policy is quite a bit more complicated than that, and I would defer to Dan Goldin to go into the detail on it. But there is an ongoing effort to work increasingly with Russian companies on a commercial basis to help fill some of the funding gap.
This is not a solution that has just one dimension. We are not prepared to reach the conclusion that——
Mr. ROHRABACHER. Let me give you a compromise solution. You see, you are unwilling, the Administration is unwilling to cut the umbilical cord. And I understand the geopolitical reasons why you don't want to put the leadership in Russia in this position of looking very badly to the rest of the world.
You can have your cake and eat it, too, if you say we are not going to deal with the Russian government; we will deal with these Russian companies. So Russia is still involved and it still gives us the ability, as they did with this FGB, to save us money, rather than worrying about—my gosh, you are talking about this reboost propulsion technology, which the whole Space Station depends on.
And we are going to leave that in the hands of whether ornot a corrupt Russian bureaucracy becomes capable in these next couple of years to transfer those funds to the right people?
Mr. LEW. Congressman, I think that there are really several aspects to our approach that make it quite a bit different from your description of our policy. First of all, as we have indicated today and in past testimony, we have an ongoing process of reviewing what we need to do in order to back up systems in the event that the Russians do not perform, so we are not just putting all of our eggs in one basket. We are not ready to assume that the Russians aren't there.
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Now we have confidence that in our international discussions, that we are dealing with a situation where the Russians will keep their word. You are assuming that they won't keep their word.
Mr. ROHRABACHER. No, no, no. The Russian government—who is the Russian government? I mean, you have all of these different layers of people, rogue elements and people who are building homes with money that should be going into space programs. Who is keeping their word?
Mr. LEW. Congressman, we have no evidence of that. I know there have been assertions of that. We have no evidence of that. If I may just finish to describe——
Mr. ROHRABACHER. You have no evidence of that? You have no evidence of the incompetency and corruption of the Russian government? What planet are you living on?
Mr. LEW. No. The specific issue that you just mentioned of funds being diverted for private use is quite a serious charge.
Mr. ROHRABACHER. And you believe there is no evidence to indicate that? Where do you think all this money has gone to and we don't have any hardware to show for it? You think it's just getting poked into a black hole someplace?
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Mr. LEW. If I can just take a moment to state our policy, we are working on many levels. We are working with the Russian governments to see that commitments are kept. We are working on our own to see that we have backup plans. And as the Administrator has indicated, we are working with Russian private companies.
I think we all agree, we need the Russian knowledge, we need the Russian cooperation.
Mr. ROHRABACHER. Let's make sure we transfer that money directly to those Russian companies, instead of trying to give it to a government that will some way get it to those Russian companies in the end and never managed to do so.
Thank you very much.
Chairman SENSENBRENNER. The gentleman's time has expired. The gentleman from Indiana, Mr. Roemer.
Mr. ROEMER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Lew, congratulations on your new job. As a former staff member, I am delighted to see a staff member elevated to such an important position. We are proud of you.
Mr. Goldin, congratulations on your recent victory in the Space Station vote.
[Laughter.]
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Chairman SENSENBRENNER. We'll all accept that.
Mr. ROEMER. I think that the facts continue to build up on our side, but you continue to pile up those votes on your side. I will be the first to congratulate you on a winning issue, even though we disagree. I have the utmost respect for you and the agency.
Mr. Moore, I am sure I will think of something, by the time my 5 minutes are up, to congratulate you on today, too, although all three of you are apparently in the hot seat here today.
I just wish I had some of my colleagues up here asking the tough questions today that would also help us solve this very, very difficult problem, and it is becoming more difficult.
Mr. Lew, I am not going to be quite as kind as my good friend from Tennessee, Mr. Gordon, on you today. I am going to ask you a couple of questions. We have heard NASA say that the Russian participation was going to save us $2 billion. In fact, it has cost us $2 billion, and it is going to cost us a lot more.
I think in one of your statements you said that if we see a worst case scenario in Russia, then we might have to do some things differently. What is a worst case scenario, if we are sending a $23 billion bailout package to the IMF to Russia, and when they need somewhere between $100 and $150 million just to keep their space agency going, and when we are probably considering buying Soyuz and Progress spacecraft in the long run because the Russians are not going to have the capability in the long term to help us with these other missions.
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Can you explain to me where does your rosy outlook come from here, and how are you going to analyze this and come up with the money to pay for these things?
Mr. LEW. Mr. Roemer, I don't think we have a rosy outlook. We look at a very grave situation in Russia. I don't think we are fooling ourselves, nor are we trying to fool you. It is a very serious situation. It's where on the continuum you are. We are working with NASA and will continue to work with NASA as we define immediate needs.
I think the question, if I may rephrase it, is when do we assume that there is no hope of commitments being kept. We haven't reached that point yet. Obviously, there are efforts like the one you described, to work with Russia to bring reform to their economy and improve the economic situation.
We think it would be inappropriate to assume that no progress will be made. We are not saying there is not a problem. What we're saying is we don't need to go all the way to——
Mr. ROEMER. Let me stop you there and try to get another question in, because I am limited and I know my Chairman is going to keep me to the 5 minutes.
We are also down to the bottom of the reserves. The Chabrow Report indicates that the schedule for NASA Shuttle missions is overly optimistic. The reserves are very, very low. The Russian Space Agency is not coming through with the sufficient appropriation through the Duma.
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What are you going to do about the reserves and how are you going to address that financial problem?
Mr. LEW. As I think Dan Goldin and I both indicated, we are taking immediate steps to meet the immediate shortfall.
Mr. ROEMER. Well, let me stop you there, too. In his usual good sense, our Chairman, in his conservative fashion, asked you where are you going to come up with $50 to $100 million? That is short-term. We can't even get an answer on that.
Mr. LEW. Well, the decisions are always difficult. It is a large program. We don't have the exact package to offer you today. We will continue to work with you. I would just note that on the scale of $50 to $100 million, we are dealing with a very different kind of problem than the other numbers we were talking about.
Mr. ROEMER. But the scale of $50 to $100 million is a drop in the bucket as to what you are going to have to fill the bucket up with over the long term on this.
Mr. LEW. That's a different question.
Mr. ROEMER. I think NASA is faced with the question, how do you get Russia out of the critical path on the Space Station, and either start to build those components at home; and then what do you do to support the scientific community in Russia so that we don't see an implosion in that community, and so that we don't see scientists going to work for other rogue nations, and so that we don't have a problem with the 20,000 nuclear weapons over there, is there another way through other scientific programs to help Russia? Because through the Space Station, they have failed time and time again, and it is escalating the cost to our taxpayer of this project year by year by year.
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Mr. LEW. I think that there really are two questions. I understand that you are asking me the forward-leaning question more than the immediate question, and I am trying very hard not to prognosticate where we are heading in the next few months.
Obviously, if we head to the end of the contingency that we would call the worst case, it leaves us with different options than we face today. I have tried to be very frank with the Committee that we will view those options differently than we view the options we face today.
I think the judgment as to when you reach that point is a very sensitive one, one that we are not making alone as a budgetary matter, and NASA is not making alone as a space matter. It is complicated by a lot of discussions regarding the situation in Russia. I think we have some information based on the meetings that happened in Russia that encourages us. I am not sitting here saying we have 100 percent confidence.
We are trying to be circumspect about what is, at its best, a very difficult situation. We think it would be wrong to make the leap right now that I think many members of this Committee would like us to make. If we get to that point, we will work together to come up with a plan that works.
Chairman SENSENBRENNER. The gentleman's time has expired. The gentleman from Michigan, Mr. Ehlers.
Mr. EHLERS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. First of all, a statement. The problem began at the beginning, and I think the difficulty arose when the agreement was reached at the highest levels of the government without pinning down the details and without adequate scientific consultation.
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Mr. Chairman, I just want to get in the record a comment relating to that. In the science policy study which I am engaged in with the Chairman and others, we received testimony a number of times, very strong testimony, that the State Department has severely cut back on their scientific personnel, their technologically trained personnel who normally were involved in such negotiations.
I don't know if that is the cause for the lack of a good agreement at the beginning, but certainly I want to indicate that could well be a possibility here. So when you go back to the beginning, if we are going to have high-level discussions deciding technical issues, it is very important for the State Department and the appropriate departments to be involved in those discussions to pin down these details before they become troublesome.
Now on to my questions. Following up on Mr. Roemer's comments and questions, let me put it in slightly a different way. You made the comment that we have to wait and see whether or not the Russians can produce. I think there is more here than just that. There is the economic question of looking at the total cost of the project. The longer we wait, the more money we lose.
We may have to make a decision to, as I put it in previous meetings, cut and run before we know for sure that they can't produce simply because we cannot tolerate any other losses. In other words, we can't afford to save so much money. I think it's very important that we make that decision in a timely way, and not simply wait until we are sure they can't produce.
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My question, Mr. Lew, is has the White House ruled out the prospect of transferring additional funds to Russia to help complete this project, again with a view to cutting our losses; or are you looking at releasing funds for proceeding to go ahead on our own, either with a temporary fix or a permanent fix to this? And I am not even going to ask you at this point where the money is coming from, whether from within NASA or outside of NASA. But are you looking seriously at that option, simply trying to cut our losses by releasing funds?
Mr. LEW. I have indicated the short-term steps that we are prepared to take; Administrator Goldin has indicated the short-term steps. The longer term, we are looking at a range of options. When the decision is made is something that I can't say right now. We are not prepared at the moment to make a longer term decision.
I would actually like to defer to the Administrator to talk a little bit about the launch schedule and the cost, because those are serious questions and questions we talk a lot about.
Mr. EHLERS. May I just ask you one more before we go to him. That is, is OMB actively considering funding a permanent replacement for the Service Module? I am not asking for an answer, whether we are going to do it. I am just saying are you actively considering funding a permanent replacement?
Mr. LEW. I think it is fair to say we are considering a range of options, a broad range of options, but we have made no decisions. So it is premature to say what we are considering in the formal sense.
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We are going to look at these questions in the fall when we do our budget review for the Fiscal Year 2000. I anticipate that when we appear before this Committee presenting the Fiscal Year 2000 budget, we will be able to satisfy a lot of the questions that you are asking in terms of our view of the program.
Mr. EHLERS. Okay, let's see. It's 6 weeks until fall starts, so we will be looking forward to that.
Mr. Goldin, did you want to add anything?
Mr. GOLDIN. Yes, I would. We are going on an approach where we want to hold the launch because the longer you delay launch, the more money you spend. It is our intention to launch November 20th the Control Module; December 3rd, the Node; and as soon as possible, the Service Module. To go replace the Service Module would be an enormous cost and an enormous schedule problem, which leads to further cost.
We will explore all possibilities. In discussions last night with Chairman Rohrabacher, we are considering everything, every possibility including company-to-company activities—and there are some companies involved. And I want to support what Mr. Lew has said. If we just jump in and give money, we lose an opportunity. We have a team in Russia right now talking to the Russians to see what possibilities exist.
The amount of money necessary to get the Service Module finished is in the tens of millions of dollars, not the hundreds of millions of dollars. And the decision is, does the Russian government put it in or do we work with the Russian government and corporate resources to get us over the finish line. I think that would be the proper approach.
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We also are looking at propulsion modules. We are asking for firm, fixed price proposals. And before we have those proposals, I think it would be inappropriate to commit to that. We are expecting a firm, fixed price proposal by the end of this month, and our evaluation will take about a month, in time for the discussions that Mr. Lew is talking about.
So we are trying to have a very deliberate process so we don't, as you said, rush too soon and then make a mistake later.
Chairman SENSENBRENNER. The gentleman's time has expired. The gentleman from Texas, Mr. Lampson.
Mr. LAMPSON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am going to try to get three questions in, gentlemen, so keep that in mind as I ask them.
Mr. Lew, in your written testimony, you state that in order to build this Station at the lowest development cost, reductions or deferrals in other Station activities such as operations, research, and later assembly hardware, may be necessary. Cutting or deferring research, one of the main reasons for the building of the Space Station in the first place, that doesn't make a lot of sense to me.
Would you explain what you mean?
Mr. LEW. Congressman, if there is a shortfall that needs to be funded—I'm not saying that would be where we would choose to go first. We agree with you, it would be desirable not to defer research. But if the choice were delay of the Station or a delay of a research project, there are very different consequences. That's what this statement is meant to indicate.
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We will work with NASA to the extent that there is any shortfall to cause minimum disruption to research. Our goal, as your goal, is to have the major purpose of the Space Station realized, which is to have human research in space go forward.
Mr. LAMPSON. If we have to have it. Mr. Goldin, even assuming the Service Module is launched next year, recent reports from Russia give us little confidence that the Russians will deliver on their agreed-to parts of the Station program.
If we can focus on one of the critical areas for just a minute, reboost. There are a number of options that are being considered, retrofitting orbiters, building a propulsion module, acquiring reboost commercially. This is an issue that we are going to have to deal with. Can you give us your thinking on how we might fix this problem?
Mr. GOLDIN. Well, I think the highest priority, after getting the Service Module up, and working with the Russian government to assure we get the maximum output for the Progress, which is their propulsion lift capability, is to make the Station more robust and move out as fast as possible on modifying the Shuttle and using the Shuttle for reboost capability. We believe we could get as much as 50 percent of the reboost capability from the Shuttle with some very minimal costs.
The next step would be to look at a U.S. propulsion module which we are doing. We are having very serious discussions, and we have authorized our contractor, Boeing, to put together a firm proposal for this rather than having a lot of rough, out-of-magnitude estimates. Early this fall, we will have that proposal, and we will evaluate it and take a look at the situation as it exists.
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The other path we are pursuing is a path that Mr. Rohrabacher had suggested. It is to work with commercial sources and have company-to-company activities. There are two companies that have indicated an interest, but we want to really flesh it out and see if they are serious.
So we are carrying all these approaches in parallel. And we believe in the months ahead, we will be having the data so we will make the timely decision. We would not need this propulsion module on orbit until mid-2001. So we believe we have the time to go through a deliberate process to make the decisions to come up with the right choices.
Mr. LAMPSON. Okay, thank you. This was in many parts, but it has to do with deorbiting the Mir Space Station. What will you do if the Russians come to you and say that they don't have the money to ensure a safe deorbiting?
Have they asked for assistance to deorbit Mir? Do they have the funds to bring it down? And is there something that we might be able to do to either force or cause that to happen and will that get them back on course with their funding? Will they dedicate the monies that are left over after that to the International Space Station?
Mr. GOLDIN. First, let me say that Russia is a sovereign nation, and with sovereignty comes certain responsibilities to other nations. Russia has to deorbit that Mir Station safely. It is part of being a responsible citizen. They have told us numerous times that is their intention. We have some people in Russia now trying to understand what the resources are that they have.
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Again, this is a responsibility they have. They have not yet asked us for help on deorbiting the Mir Station.
Mr. LAMPSON. Is there something that we can do to push this along, to make it happen more quickly?
Mr. GOLDIN. The plan is to bring it down in a controlled fashion in June of next year. I believe the Russian government understands the responsibility they have, but it is not inappropriate for communications from members of this government to their government to remind them of the responsibility they have to be a responsible citizen.
Mr. LAMPSON. Do you think there is a hope that we can speed it up?
Mr. GOLDIN. I don't think we could speed it up beyond June of 1999, because it takes time to bring it down and if you try and bring it down too fast, you bring it down in an uncontrolled fashion. So speed is not the issue; the issue is making sure they have the proper resources to bring it down.
Chairman SENSENBRENNER. The gentleman's time has expired. The gentleman from Florida, Dr. Weldon.
Mr. WELDON of Florida. Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous consent that my opening statement be included in the record.
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Chairman SENSENBRENNER. Without objection. Also, without objection, all members' opening statements will be included in the record.
Mr. WELDON of Florida. I would also ask unanimous consent that I be permitted to submit testimony for the record that has been written by the United States Space Foundation. The U.S. Space Foundation testimony offers some important observations that are worthy of the Committee's consideration.
[The prepared statements of Mr. Weldon, Mr. Brown, Mr. Roemer, Ms. Lee, and the statement of the United States Space Foundation follow:]
"The Official Committee record contains additional material here."
Chairman SENSENBRENNER. Without objection.
Mr. WELDON of Florida. Mr. Goldin, I would also like to congratulate you, as well as the members of this Committee, who worked hard to get a strong vote out of the House in support of the Space Station.
Certainly, that vote of confidence does not take away the fact that we are dealing with some pretty serious issues, particularly as it relates to the failure of the Russians to properly fund in a timely fashion their elements of this project, though I am certainly very pleased that the FGB may actually get launched in 3 months and we may have Node One flying on a Shuttle off of a launch pad at Kennedy Space Center.
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Mr. Goldin, the appropriators cut the Shuttle budget by what they thought was the marginal cost of a Shuttle flight. They implemented a general cut of $32 million for the two flights that were included in the budget request, but that won't happen because of the continued Russian delays.
That makes the marginal cost of a single flight at about $16 million by my calculations. And indeed, a few years ago, NASA turned around Columbia—or I guess maybe it was just last year—turned around Columbia and re-flew it in a month, and the marginal cost on that mission was slightly higher but still in the neighborhood of a few tens of millions of dollars.
Can you give me your rough estimate of the marginal cost of a single Shuttle flight?
Mr. GOLDIN. As I believe it, it is $90 million. The numbers you are stating are not numbers that I recognize, and for the record, I would like to give you a more detailed answer. But I just checked with my staff here. My recollection was 90; they told me 90. I don't know how to address this issue without sitting down and going through the notes in detail.
[The following information was received for the record:]
"The Official Committee record contains additional material here."
Mr. WELDON of Florida. Well, Mr. Lew, let's suppose that it is $90 million, rather than $16 million, or the $20 million that NASA claimed they expended to turn around Columbia. You stated in your testimony that the White House could ask NASA to cancel Shuttle flights in order to free up funding for the International Space Station.
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Has the White House examined the impact on the already limited flight opportunities of the science community in that regard?
Mr. LEW. Congressman, we have not asked NASA for any specific policy change. We are exploring a broad range of issues, and we are going to seek, in whatever options we take, to cause minimum disruption to the research program. So the conversation that is taking place between us and NASA is very much reflective of the conversation that is taking place between us today.
I think we share the same goal here. The question is not how do we do damage to the research program; it is how do we avoid doing damage to it. We are committed to not doing damage to the research program.
With that said, it is difficult. This is not the only area of the budget where it is difficult when you squeeze $50 or $100 million. There is a large program. There are options that could be pursued. We would come to you with specifics, and we would like to discuss the specifics rather than a hypothetical when it is appropriate.
Mr. WELDON of Florida. Well, the main point I wanted to get to is that the estimates of the cost of replacing the Service Module, and hopefully, we will not have to come to that. I am very pleased that the Service Module made it from Krunichev to Energia.
But the costs begin at around $400 million and then they go up from there. The point I want to make is it does not appear as though you can free up that kind of funding or the kind of funding you need to replace propulsion capabilities by cancelling Shuttle flights, which is what you alluded to in your testimony.
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I don't believe that you can get the kind of money that you need to keep this program on track by cancelling Shuttle flights or continuing to raid the Shuttle budget. And specifically, we have received testimony previously that as you drop the number of Shuttle missions below five, you get into some very serious concerns about safety, because you are just not operating the workforce sufficiently to keep everybody up to speed.
And there have been claims that you can achieve these safety levels by doing simulations, even though the level may drop below five. However, there have been some problems with doing simulations, as well.
So I take serious issue with the idea of continuing to raid the manned space flight account, and we all know what you are talking about when you talk that way. You are talking about raiding the Shuttle account. I am very concerned that the numbers don't add up, number one. Number two, safety is going to be seriously compromised.
Mr. LEW. Congressman, if I could respond? First of all, we have no higher priority than safety. You won't find a disagreement between us on the question of safety. We are committed to it. We have worked with NASA to make sure that we enhance safety, that we don't do anything to diminish it.
With regard to the Shuttle flights, we have taken steps to increase, not decrease the number of Shuttle flights. Administrator Goldin can address the details of them, but we've added two Shuttle flights for research. So this is not a question of cutting back on Shuttle flights.
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If I may, I am caught in a position here where the questions I am getting are directed at the immediate needs for $50 to $100 million, but really they are aimed at what we will do if we need $500 million to $1 billion.
Respectfully, I cannot respond to that hypothetical. My testimony doesn't address that hypothetical. I am not addressing it in my remarks today. What I am saying is that should we find ourselves in the situation that the needs are that great, there is going to have to be some very serious discussion between us. I just think we need to separate the issues and deal with the short-term issue, which is of a very different magnitude than the situation that you are concerned about.
I am not saying the concern is not one that we are also thinking about. We just haven't reached the conclusion and we are not making that judgment yet.
Chairman SENSENBRENNER. The gentleman's time has expired. The gentleman from California, Mr. Brown.
Mr. BROWN of California. Mr. Lew, I just want to raise or reraise one issue, and you may have dealt with it more extensively while I was temporarily out of the room.
From the beginning of this budgetary squeeze with regard to the Space Station and the remainder of the NASA budget, the members of this Committee have made it extremely clear that financing cost overruns in the Space Station program out of the research budget was not an acceptable solution.
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I have said over and over that if it appeared to be going in that direction, I would sacrifice the Space Station, because I think I have been through many ups and downs in the space program over the last 35 years and I've seen a lot of money wasted over those years.
It is my view that research productivity, or the value of the Apollo program, for example, was not worth the money we spent on it. It was done as a matter of national prestige, not because of the value.
There is a similar argument made with regard to the Space Station, that it is not that valuable from a research standpoint, and you can make a good argument. It is a matter, to some, of purely national prestige. To me, it is not only a matter of national prestige, but it is laying the foundation for our future in space, and I support it because of that.
But my highest priority for the space program has been and will continue to be the enhancement of human knowledge that is produced by that, both in terms of basic research, but also in terms of engineering capability resulting from the erection of large structures in space and so on.
Now, you have made it clear that the Space Station is not going to be financed out of the Shuttle program or anything that would endanger or increase the risk to the astronauts, and there is good reason for that. If you were to have an accident that could be traced to underfunding of the Shuttle program, there would be hell to pay, very honestly, from the public of the United States.
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That is not true of the science program, and I look, therefore, on my responsibility as focusing on trying to indicate the importance of the science program in terms of its long-term value to the nation. And everything you said indicates you share those views.
But I will say again, as I think I said before, that there are many ways you can scrimp on the science program without looking like you are cutting into the science program. As NASA becomes more efficient, for example, with its smaller missions and faster operations, money is saved. Now, the question is, should that money be reinvested or added to the science budget, or could we squeeze a few bucks out of that money saved and put it into the Space Station?
I think that is what's been happening, very honestly. You are saying, quite properly, that we haven't actually cut the space program. I am saying to you that NASA hasn't had to cut any existing programs, but they have foregone what I consider to be very important research opportunities in order to fund the overruns in the Space Station.
Now, you are currently looking, or will be shortly, at the 2000 budget, and you are going to be asking these questions: How can we squeeze a little bit more out of this or that in order to make this shortfall up on the Space Station?
It is my contention that that should have been faced honestly before now and that you shouldn't have been looking for additional ways to squeeze money out of an already squeezed NASA program, but you should have been realistically been facing up to the priority overall of NASA instead and doing something to stabilize or increase the budget instead of continued cuts.
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That is not a question; that is just a statement, and we will deal with it next year when you have gone through some of this exercise. But I am honestly very deeply perturbed. If we continue along this course and not take the leap forward that is necessary to find that half billion or $1 billion that is the cumulative shortfall on the Space Station, I am going to have to reconsider my own position here in order to preserve what I think are the basic values of the space program.
Chairman SENSENBRENNER. The gentleman's time has expired. The gentleman from Minnesota, Mr. Gutknecht.
Mr. GUTKNECHT. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. A lot of the questions I was going to ask have already been asked. Mr. Lew, congratulations on your new job, I think.
Mr. LEW. Thank you, Congressman.
Mr. GUTKNECHT. Today we are celebrating the 1-year anniversary of the President's signing of the Balanced Budget Agreement. I was there in the Rose Garden when the bill was signed, and we are finding how difficult it is to cram $1.9 billion worth of wants and needs into a $1.7 billion budget. I also serve on the Budget Committee.
I don't really have a question. I do admire the work that Mr. Goldin and the team down at NASA have done in trying to get more value for research in terms of the amount of dollars we give them in budget. This is a big, big problem. But I do have to echo the comments of some of my colleagues, the Ranking Member, as well as the gentleman from Indiana, that I think the Administration is making it very tough for people who like me who is a friend of the Space Station and the space program, but who also consider themselves to be budget hawks, on how we are going to deal with this.
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I think continuing to postpone any real decision making may make matters even worse next year. So I think we need to have a much more coherent message—the Administration, NASA, the Congress, all of us—in terms of what the future of the Space Station is going to be, especially in view of the growing body of evidence that the Russians are not going to be able to live up to their end of this agreement.
So that is not a question; it is more of an observation and a comment. But I think the Administration and NASA needs to be aware that there are more and more members who are having second thoughts about this whole thing, and we need a very coherent message and strategy to deal with this.
And with that, I would yield the balance of my time to my colleague from Florida, who probably has better questions than I do to ask anyway.
Chairman SENSENBRENNER. The gentleman from Florida.
Mr. WELDON of Florida. I thank the gentleman for yielding. I wanted to get Mr. Lew and Mr. Moore on the record regarding the aspect of this Russian cooperation in terms of its antiproliferation capabilities. The record is replete with claims that bringing the Russians into the critical pathway and bringing them into the Space Station program would help in this problem of Russian proliferation after the end of the Cold War.
It has become very clear recently that the Russians have been aiding the Iranian missile program. We saw testimony of the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency in January, as well as the conclusions of the bipartisan Rumsfeld Commission earlier last month, and the CIA report submitted to Congress on proliferation activities in 1997, which the Senate released.
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All of these authoritative and official sources confirm that Iran has received assistance from Russia in improving its missile capabilities. Indeed, I believe the Administration itself has recently sanctioned several Russian air-space companies for these proliferation activities.
Your comments on this. As I see it, this has been a major failure of the Russian cooperation in the Space Station effort, beyond the issue that we have been talking about, which is the cost overruns and the delays. We have not realized the antiproliferation aspects that we were hoping to see from this cooperative effort.
Mr. MOORE. Well, that certainly was a part of it, but of course, the major reason we wanted the Russians in was because of their experience. With regard to the specific issue of Iran, the Russian Space Agency has not been designated as one of the agencies transferring technology to Iran, so at this point, the only thing I can say is the other agencies would fall under the National Security Council people, and not under the Technology Division at OSTP.
Mr. WELDON of Florida. Let me just follow up on that, though. I'm not an authority on the way the Russian government works, but these agencies that have been sanctioned, aren't they essentially run by the Russian government, as is the Russian Space Agency.
So when we sanction one and not the other, they are all reporting to the same people. Aren't we just kidding ourselves when we say the Russian Space Agency is not involved? The Russian government is sanctioning this proliferation. You have a situation where the Iranians now can drop missiles, as I understand it, right into Russia itself, which is an aspect of this that boggles my mind.
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And this is an aspect of this effort that has not been a success; it has been a dismal failure.
Chairman SENSENBRENNER. The gentleman's time has expired. The gentleman from Maryland, Mr. Bartlett.
Mr. BARTLETT. Thank you very much. I have a question for Mr. Lew and Dr. Moore. In Mr. Lew's testimony, he referred to best of intentions in Russia. I'd like to ask Mr. Lew and Dr. Moore if they are familiar with Yamatah Mountain.
Mr. MOORE. I am not.
Mr. BARTLETT. Mr. Lew?
Mr. LEW. No, sir.
Mr. BARTLETT. Let me tell you then what Yamatah Mountain is. It is an enormous underground complex in the Ural Mountains. It is, as far as we know, probably the largest, most nuclear secure facility in all of the world. It was started during Brezhnev. It has cost them about $4 billion. They have two cities housing 60,000 people, not full right now. But they have increased housing in those cities with swimming pools and tennis courts, the kind of accoutrements that almost nobody gets in Russia.
We do not know why they are building this; they refuse to let anybody from this country visit it. As the Russians are pouring enormous resources into Yamatah Mountain, they also are continuing to upgrade their nuclear weapons, and they continue to build more submarines than we are building.
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I wonder if the two of you could comment on how this prioritization of Russian expenditures reflects on what you think their intentions might be.
Mr. MOORE. I am not prepared to understand how they set their priorities. I am not a student of Russian economy.
Mr. LEW. Congressman, we would have to produce witnesses from the Defense and foreign policy establishments to address in detail those questions. What I am more familiar with is the conversations that have taken place regarding the Space Station at the highest level between our governments, and they have been very serious conversations.
On that issue, we have pushed very hard; we have gotten a response. We are going to have ongoing discussions. I can't address all of the other things that are going on within the Russian——
Mr. BARTLETT. This is clearly a matter of priority in Russia. They continue to pour large amounts of money into Yamatah Mountain. They continue to build submarines. They continue to upgrade their nuclear weapons. Clearly, the Space Station is not a very high priority with the Russians.
I think, as we look to the future and what sort of cooperation we can receive from the Russians, we need to consider what their priorities are and where they are putting their resources. Thank you.
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Chairman SENSENBRENNER. The gentleman yields back his time. The gentlewoman from Maryland is en route. The gentlewoman from Maryland appears to be our last inquisitor today.
Mrs. MORELLA. Thank you. I guess there are several questions I wanted to ask this very distinguished panel, and thank you for being with us today. It's very informative.
I wondered, does OMB think that the Space Station is a higher priority than NASA's Earth and Space Science Programs or its Aeronautics and Space Transportation Programs. I guess, putting that in a context so it might be more specifically answered, did the President request more money for earth science, space science, aeronautical research and space transportation technology activities than is needed in Fiscal Year 1999?
Mr. LEW. Mrs. Morella, I think the question of highest priority is not between the whole programs. Clearly, we have very high priorities in each of these areas. We are very proud of our record, and in response to some of the things we have heard, we think NASA deserves an awful lot of credit for producing a great deal with less resources. Quite the contrary, they haven't been punished for it; they've been rewarded for it, and I think their relations, in a period of very tight budgets and the funding levels they have gotten when others have gotten cuts reflects that.
When the question comes as to marginal priorities, yes, the Space Station is a very high priority. We don't think it has to come at the expense of our earth science program or our aeronautics program. We are into the details of the marginal decisions, and we would endeavor to put together a package, if we needed to come up with $50 or $100 million, that it didn't endanger any of our priorities in those areas.
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So we don't think we have to choose between our priorities.
Mrs. MORELLA. That's a very nice answer. But can we assume then that no funds would be transferred from those programs into the International Space Station?
Mr. LEW. I can't really speak authoritatively on a plan I haven't seen, so I would have to offer to come back to you and speak to that issue later. Obviously, if we have to take money from somewhere to put somewhere else, something will go down. I wouldn't suggest that we could make the funds materialize out of nowhere.
We would endeavor to have the funds come in a way that did no damage, and that is something I think we could do.
Mrs. MORELLA. I just hope you wouldn't take from one group of programs that worked so well to put into another one, and that we would do our planning accordingly.
Another question that maybe people haven't thought about. I am cochairing the House Y2K Task Force. And I don't think anybody has asked about whether the Russians are ready to be compliant with the conversion for the Year 2000 computer glitch. From what I hear internationally, they are not. I wondered, are we checking on this?
Mr. GOLDIN. Yes.
Mrs. MORELLA. And?
Mr. GOLDIN. Yes, I can answer that affirmatively. We have set up a series of meetings with the Russians, not just the Russians, but the Europeans, the Japanese, the Canadians, and all our international partners. As part of the NASA Y2K problem, we are not just going within our agency, but we are working with our contractors and our international partners and we are working with the Russians and tracking their Y2K efforts.
Mrs. MORELLA. Do they have Y2K efforts?
Mr. GOLDIN. Yes, they do, but they are not at the same state as we are.
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Mrs. MORELLA. That really is a tremendous problem. And with the other partners also. They are so worried about the Eastern—rather, I should say in Europe, they are worried about the euro. In other areas, they are worried about the financial situation. I just think that working on compliance is back burner stuff with them. They still haven't realized how important it is.
Someone from the State Department said, kiddingly, I think, when asking a Russian about the millennium bug, what were they going to do about the millennium bug. And he said, oh, we know how to spray anyplace. And so I think because of the interoperability problem, we just must make sure we don't just take their word for it, but get some proof from them.
Mr. GOLDIN. Well, we will report to you for the record of our latest findings, but I did not let it go down lower in the organization. I am personally talking at the highest levels within the Russian government that works with us to make them aware that we are concerned about Y2K. I didn't delegate it away.
Mrs. MORELLA. Thank you. I would be very interested in getting your report back from you, too. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman SENSENBRENNER. The gentlewoman yields back the balance of her time.
Let me thank the Committee members and all three witnesses for what I think has been a very productive hearing. Mr. Lew, when you get a little bit more information, we will welcome you back so that you can share your information with us.
Mr. LEW. It would be my pleasure.
Chairman SENSENBRENNER. The Committee stands adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 11:35 p.m., the Committee was adjourned, to reconvene at the call of the Chair.]
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[The following information was received for the record:]
"The Official Committee record contains additional material here."
U.S.-RUSSIAN COOPERATION IN HUMAN SPACEFLIGHT, PART V: THE ADMINISTRATION'S PROPOSED BAIL-OUT FOR RUSSIA
WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 7, 1998
U.S. House of Representatives,
Committee on Science,
Washington, DC.
The Committee met, pursuant to notice, at 10 a.m., in room 2318, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. F. James Sensenbrenner, Jr., Chairman of the Committee, presiding.
Chairman SENSENBRENNER. The Committee will be in order.
At this Committee's first hearing in the 105th Congress, the Administration asked us to support and fund the Interim Control Module as an insurance policy against the possibility that the Russian Service Module might be delayed past its April 1998 launch date. That's right. I said the Service Module was supposed to be launched 6 months ago.
We did what the Administration asked and supported the ICM. Congress kept its part of the bargain. But here we are again. The problem has not been fixed and instead it's getting worse. Two years later and the American people are still waiting for their Space Station. We are still waiting for the first element launch. We are still waiting for the Service Module. We are still waiting upon the Russian government. And we are still waiting for a plan from the President of the United States to solve these problems.
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But instead of a solution, the Administration is asking for a blank check. It wants to keep throwing money at the Russians, $660 million more. On top of the $472 million we paid Russia for access to Mir, on top of the $210 million we paid Russia for the FGB. On top of the tens of millions of dollars we're paying Russia for administrative support. And on top of the $1.2 billion Russia has already cost the American taxpayer by failing to honor its commitments and to meet the schedule.
What's worse is that this Administration does not have the courtesy or the courage to be up front and honest with the American people about the cost of this bailout. It won't put the $660 million bail out in writing. Instead all the White House will let NASA talk about is the tip of the iceberg, the $60 million it wants to pay the Russians immediately.
Why is that? I think it's because the White House doesn't want to admit that its management of our relationship with Russia is fundamentally flawed. The President promised me in writing in 1994 that we would not be dependent upon the Russians to build the International Space Station. The Administration's representatives from the White House, the State Department, and NASA all came up here and repeated that falsehood for years. And now the Administration wants to stick the American taxpayers with the cost of its mistakes, just to hide the fact that it's made them. It is not a mere coincidence that the Administration waited until the last and busiest week of this Congress to propose another bailout of Russia.
This Administration aggressively lobbied Congress to support bringing Russia into the program. For a while, you couldn't walk down these halls without tripping over someone from the White House or the State Department or NASA trying to convince you of all the benefits for starting this partnership. But suddenly, when NASA has to pay the bill for somebody else's foreign policy and budgetary mistakes, the White House and the State Department are nowhere to be seen. They refused to testify at this hearing, although their decisions have brought us to this point. Worse still, the Administration has been lobbying the Senate to oppose the NASA authorization bill in order to escape accountability. A year and a half ago, in April of 1997, this Committee adopted, and the House of Representatives passed, a 2-year authorization bill with an amendment that Mr. Brown and I wrote. We directed the Administration to create the contingency plan that it promised it already had and tried to establish a decision tree that would have helped prevent our current and very, very costly problems.
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The amendment also precluded NASA from paying the Russians to do the work they had already committed to perform, in writing, as partners. Now, when the Senate is considering similar measures along with cost caps and time lines, NASA has pulled out all the stops to prevent passage. And, in doing so, NASA is attempting to thwart the desire of the American people to have accountability and sound management in government. That's treading on dangerously thin ice, where I come from.
I cannot go along with NASA's request to start bailing out the Russian space program. I have seen nothing, nothing since passage of the Sensenbrenner-Brown amendment that would lead me to believe that NASA, the White House, or the Russians would make good use of the money. An appearance at today's hearing by the White House and State Department would have at least sent a signal that they care about this program and want to work with us toward a solution.
That's why the Speaker and I sent a letter to Mr. Talbott, the Deputy Secretary of State, and Mr. Lew, the Director of the Office of Management and Budget, asking them to reconsider their refusals to appear. Mr. Lew had the courtesy to send us a letter saying that he was engaged in another meeting, which I ask unanimous consent to include in that part of the—or this part of the record.
[The letter referred to follows:]
"The Official Committee record contains additional material here."
Chairman SENSENBRENNER. But Mr. Talbott, the Deputy Secretary of State and the author of the President's Russian foreign policy, did not even have the courtesy to write us a letter saying that he would not appear. And I consider that an insult to the Congress and an insult to those of us who support this space program, because we need to have the facts in order to make correct decisions.
We also stated—this is the Speaker and I—that we could not even begin considering to support the initial $60 million reallocation without their constructive participation in the process. The plain truth is the White House is addicted to the Russians. I'm beginning to think it doesn't care whether the Space Station gets built, as long as the Russians are happy. The problem is that our relationship with the Russian space program is fundamentally flawed, is hurting our national interest, is costing the American taxpayers unnecessary money, and is not accomplishing the foreign policy goals that its supporters have touted.
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What makes me particularly angry is that all the talent, all the creativity, and all the energy and all the passion that exists for space within NASA and the American public is being squandered in frantic efforts to create ad hoc, short-term, band-aids to enable the White House to indulge its addiction to Russia, instead of being channeled into actually building our Space Station and opening the space frontier. We need to kick this habit. Congress has repeatedly offered a range of suggestions; each of them, the White House has summarily rejected.
The Administration is backing America into a corner and setting up a confrontation that could undermine all the good things our space program has accomplished. And I see only one way of avoiding it. The Administration needs to take the Russian government out of the critical path now, as promised to me by the President over 4 years ago. The Congress and the Administration promised we would not become dependent upon Russia. The Administration lied.
Last April, the Cost Assessment and Validation Task Force recommended the immediate initiation of the U.S. propulsion capability. On July 30th, NASA recommended that to the White House. Both times, the White House said, no. It prefers the long-term hidden costs of this dependence on Russia to the short-term pain of biting the bullet and doing the right thing.
Well, I don't. If we don't see some willingness to meet Congress in the middle and some acceptance of reality from the White House soon, then I plan to spend my time working with other members of this Committee and the Congress in drafting legislation for introduction in the next Congress that will put an end to this problem, one way or the other. My colleagues and I might find a way to do that and keep Russia in the program. We might not. I would prefer to work with the Administration, but we can't keep waiting for leadership that hasn't come yet and may never come.
And now I yield to Mr. Brown for his opening statement.
Mr. BROWN of California. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I will make a very brief statement and ask your permission to yield a portion of my time to our distinguished member from Indiana.
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Chairman SENSENBRENNER. Without objection.
Mr. BROWN of California. First, I would like to welcome Administrator Goldin and the other witnesses today. This is the latest in a series of hearings that the Committee has held on the Space Station program and Russian participation and, while I have agreed with the Chairman in the past and still agree to a large extent on the importance of solving this problem, I, out of courtesy to the Administration, do not take quite as strong a position as he does on the need to move ahead here. But we do need answers to the questions that he's outlined and I will work with him in trying to attain those answers.
With regard to the absence of two Administration witnesses, which I regret, we have a letter from Mr. Lew explaining that, which the Chairman's already put in the record. And I should like to point out, as far as Secretary Talbott is concerned, who is in part the architect of our Russian agreement, that he is currently serving as Acting Secretary of State while Secretary Albright is on a peacekeeping mission in the Middle East and he is having to devote his attention to the developing crisis in Kosovo. I think it's understandable that he can't be here, but I think he probably should have given us a letter indicating the reasons for it.
Having said that, let me yield whatever time I have remaining to the distinguished gentleman from Indiana.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Brown follows:]
"The Official Committee record contains additional material here."
Chairman SENSENBRENNER. The gentleman from Indiana.
Mr. ROEMER. Thank you, Mr. Brown, and thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate it.
Mr. Goldin, you were up before our Committee several years ago and you said that the Russian-U.S. participation—partnership would save the taxpayer $2 billion. We paid the Russians $400 million for renting Mir and we put out fires on Mir. Now we're proposing to pay $1.2 billion to rent research time on a Space Station that's not even built.
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We've had a problem with the Space Station over there for the last several years, where we've had a meltdown, an implosion, and cost overruns. Now our main partner, the Russians, are in an economic meltdown and implosion with their economy and the ruble. And we can't get answers from NASA or the Administration.
And I think that it is time for Congress to take the lead and not continue to blame NASA. Not continue to blame the Administration. It is our responsibility to do something about this Space Station that continues to suck up valuable funds away from NASA; that continues to threaten to cannibalize other important programs going on in NASA; that continues to threaten our relationship with the Russians, with the overruns and inefficiencies and bailout proposals that we have now. Each delay costs our American scienceprograms. Each delay costs the American taxpayer more money. And each delay threatens any kind of viable Space Station in the future.
So I think it is incumbent upon this Congress to take the reins of this growing and escalating problem and address it and get the Russians out of the path, the critical path; do some things to restructure the Space Station; and I would advocate canceling it to save NASA from itself. NASA is doing many, many important and wonderful things for the taxpayer, but we can't even see through the haze of these cost overruns within the budget and the meltdown in Russia.
So I would encourage this Committee, Mr. Chairman, to take the tough and necessary leadership steps because NASA can't do it. The Administration won't do it. We need to do it and act now.
And I yield back the balance of my time.
[The opening statements of Mr. Weldon, Mr. Gutknecht, Mr. Roemer, Ms. Jackson Lee, and Ms. Lee follow:]
"The Official Committee record contains additional material here."
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Chairman SENSENBRENNER. Okay. Today we have four witnesses. The Honorable Daniel Goldin, Administrator of NASA; Mr. Jay Chabrow, Chairman of the Cost Assessment and Validation Task Force, who thought he only had one appearance before this Committee and this is now his third, and I thank him for that; Mr. James Oberg, who is an aerospace consultant from Houston, Texas, and author of the book Red Star in Orbit, same admonition to him, and Professor Judyth Twigg, who is an assistant professor at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, Virginia.
Would each of you please stand and raise your right hand to be sworn.
Do you and each of you solemnly swear that the testimony you are about to give in this proceeding be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God?
Mr. GOLDIN. I do.
Mr. CHABROW. I do.
Mr. OBERG. I do.
Ms. TWIGG. I do.
Chairman SENSENBRENNER. Let the record show that each of the four witnesses answered in the affirmative.
The first witness will be the Honorable Daniel Goldin.
Without objection, members' opening statements will be placed at the appropriate part of the record. Without objection, all four of your written statements will be placed in the record at the time you testify. I would ask that each of the witnesses summarize their written testimony in 5 minutes or so, so that we can get to what I'm sure will be a vigorous round of questions.
Mr. Goldin.
TESTIMONY OF DANIEL S. GOLDIN, ADMINISTRATOR, NATIONAL AERONAUTICS AND SPACE ADMINISTRATION, WASHINGTON, DC
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Mr. GOLDIN. Mr. Chairman, and members of the Committee, I am pleased to be here today to address the current state of affairs in Russia and what we need to do to build the International Space Station at the least cost to the American taxpayer and in the shortest amount of time. The fact remains that the Russian Space Agency continues to have a very difficult time fulfilling its obligations to the International Space Station. As I have testified before, this is not because of technical capability or competence. It is simply because RSA is dependent upon an unstable economy.
It is clear that Russia's problems have cost the ISS program both time and money. And the chances are that they will continue to frustrate our talented program managers and test the patience of this Committee and the Administration. But we still do not think that this means we should give up on Russia's very valuable participation in the program. And we are go for launch in November and December of this year. As you know, a NASA team has just returned from the general designer's review in Russia. My written testimony contains a more detailed account of those meetings. And I, along with NASA's Associate Administrator for Space Flight, Joe Rothenberg, welcome the opportunity to answer whatever questions you have.
But allow me to use my time now to briefly summarize that statement. First, in response to the situation in Russia, we have already taken steps to reduce costs by incrementally buying down risk. These contingency plans already underway include continuing development of the largely completed Interim Control Module and also the development of enhanced Shuttle reboost capability. We believe that the product of the last series of meetings in Russia is a strategy that further mitigates our risk. It does so by maintaining U.S. confidence both in pressing forward in near-term and proceeding with scheduled November and December launches while also supporting our long-term objectives.
We have proposed a change in the operating plan that provides immediate funding to the Russian Space Agency by way of purchasing goods and services, most notably the use ofresearch crew time during the ISS assembly. Mr. Chairman, in May you suggested that if money were to go to Russia, NASA should receive a quid pro quo. Here we got it. Under the proposed arrangement with RSA, which has a payment schedule tied to their reaching milestones that are critical for assembly, we would actually double the amount of astronaut hours spent on U.S. research.
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We have also addressed longer term stability for the program with contingency plans to build more U.S. hardware and add Shuttle flights, if necessary. No doubt, there will be more challenges ahead.
But the basis for all our decisions regarding the development of the ISS remains, as I said earlier, building it at the least cost to the taxpayer and in the shortest amount of time. We feel strongly that this is the best approach to do that. Mr. Chairman, I look forward to hearing the rest of the Committee's comments and hope we will be receiving your support in addressing what we need to do.
[The prepared statement and attachments of Mr. Goldin follow:]
"The Official Committee record contains additional material here."
[As of Friday, December 18, 1998, NASA failed to respond to the written questions submitted by Chairman Sensenbrenner on October 13, 1998.]
Chairman SENSENBRENNER. Thank you, Mr. Goldin.
Mr. Chabrow.
TESTIMONY OF JAY CHABROW, CHAIRMAN, COST ASSESSMENT AND VALIDATION TASK FORCE, NASA ADVISORY COUNCIL
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Mr. CHABROW. Chairman Sensenbrenner and members of the Committee, I am pleased to appear before you once again to address challenges in developing the International Space Station.
As you recall, last spring I chaired an independent Cost Assessment and Validation Task Force. This task force concluded that the ISS program did not contain sufficient reserves to provide coverage for all prospective technical and schedule risks inherent in such a high-risk research and development program. In June of this year, I testified that NASA had largely accepted the task force's recommendations. NASA agreed that specific actions identified in the CAV report could reduce risk and minimize the potential for schedule slippage, but specified that the details would be addressed with its Fiscal Year 2000 budget submission.
Although at present I am not engaged in the daily monitoring process which was necessary to generate the CAV report, I have, at the Administrator's request, continued to actively participate with NASA in the monitoring and evaluation of the ISS program and have continued to serve on the Advisory Committee on the International Space Station.
The Committee has asked that I comment on the likelihood that NASA's approach of procuring goods and services from Russia will solve Russia's persistent inability to meet its obligations. Having minimal insight into the proportion of RSA funding that is derived, indirectly, from other Russian governmental sources or what percentage of commercial revenues might be footing some of the cost, it's really difficult to comment on what will likely transpire in Russia. I would suggest that there are many experts who can provide opinions relative to Russia's future economic stability and how the Russian space program will be ultimately affected. My awareness of the Russian situation comes primarily from the continued stream of news reports which expound on new crises which seems to occur almost every day. This cannot bode well for the Russian Space Agency.
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I will respond to the criticality of the Russian capabilities, how their presence or absence might change the development cost of the ISS and whether or not this approach appears reasonable, given the current situation. As you recall, the CAV task force delineated the Russian partnership as the major cost and schedule threat to the ISS program. Since May, not a single ruble has flowed from the Russian government to RSA. Even knowing that, I will still tell you that, without near-term Russian participation, the cost to assemble the ISS would easily exceed the CAV task force's projection.
There are many areas where NASA is dependent on Russia in the near-term. This includes propulsion, command and control, crew habitability, and crew return. Russia's failure to provide these critical capabilities on schedule will result in increased costs. We have already seen evidence of this. This makes it quite apparent that the United States should be developing its own capabilities. Without a permanent propulsion capability from either the United States or Russia, the ISS cannot be assembled in obit.
It will likely take 3 or 4 more years to develop a U.S. propulsion module. The Interim Control Module, which NASA has funded and developed, cannot bridge the gap until a permanent propulsion module can be delivered. This almost dictates continued Russian involvement. The absence of other Russian capabilities have their own set of negative consequences, resulting in the higher cost and schedule delay. The ramifications of a shortfall in Soyuz or Progress flights can already be seen in NASA's recently revised assembly sequence, where there are now two additional Shuttle flights identified for logistics.
In the near-term, maintaining Russian participation until the United States develops its own independent capabilities is significantly cheaper than the cost of developing the ISS without Russia. Towards this goal, NASA has recently entered into a $60 million agreement for Russia to deliver utilization resources that are in short supply during assembly. This $60 million is an aspirin to Russia to cure their immediate headache. However, precautions should be taken to assure that, in the process, that this doesn't turn into a migraine for the United States.
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With each decline of the Russian economy, the level of cost and schedule risk to the ISS program does increase. The difficulty is in determining how to maintain program stability when, at this time, the program is inexorably tied to a partner experiencing economic instability. NASA is struggling with what the Russian Space Agency will be able to deliver, when it will be delivered, and how to modify its current agreements and contract directly for specific hardware and services should RSA not deliver within some proximity to the current plan.
What the ultimate price will be, the specific nature of the contracts and entities with whom NASA may contract is still to be determined. There are also uncertainties to be addressed with the Russian government, especially as their level of partnership diminishes. To deal with these uncertainties, NASA is buying down risk or, in a colloquial sense, I think they're eating this elephant one bite at a time.
I agree with NASA's approach because of the negative consequences of doing otherwise. I suggest that the Committee look at the past performance of RSA and other Russian contractors when they were provided adequate levels of funding. It is clear that, when funding was provided, their performance was excellent and, even now, without meaningful funding, somehow, in many instances, they are delivering. However, one would be foolish, however, to think there will not be additional costs or schedule slips.
To avoid the United States being placed in a continuing enabling role to Russia, we must assure the expeditious development of United States capabilities. I want to convey my deepest concern that NASA has not moved forward and initiated the procurement of long lead items for a propulsion module. It is imperative that NASA expedite this development activity. I cannot understand why this is not one of the highest priority items in the agency. Each month that passes by without developing the capabilities necessary to achieve U.S. independence, puts the program at further risk for additional cost growth.
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The Russian situation has obscured the fact, by the way, that there are still challenges here in the United States. As you recall, the CAV expressed concern and highlighted many issues that have now become reality. For example, the U.S. laboratory and other elements have continued to incur schedule erosion, the de-staffing plan has not been met, the prime contract cost did continue to grow, and multi-element testing is being pushed out by software and hardware problems.
Although there are still some open issues, which are identified in the CAV report, again, the two major pacing items continue to be the procurement of a propulsion module and the acceleration of the development and production of a Crew Return Vehicle. Both of these activities are major steps toward U.S. independence and immediate funding should be directed toward these two significant issues. Last May's assembly schedule adjustment and an additional schedule adjustment just made a few days ago provide some margin to address other risks that were identified in the CAV. So while I chose only to highlight the major concerns, I am still concerned that there will be additional cost growth and schedule slippage in other areas.
Finally, this is a good time to state that reviews with the program management team do clearly demonstrate that they are implementing many creative alternatives to compensate for a Russian shortfall and budget constraints. However, they do need help from the Administration and Committees such as this to successfully complete this vital space asset. I believe, sir, that's the reason for today's hearing and I do appreciate the opportunity to participate.
[The prepared statement and attachments of Mr. Chabrow follow:]
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"The Official Committee record contains additional material here."
[As of Friday, December 18, 1998, Mr. Chabrow failed to respond to the written questions submitted by Chairman Sensenbrenner on October 13, 1998.]
Chairman SENSENBRENNER. Thank you, Mr. Chabrow.
Professor Twigg.
TESTIMONY OF JUDYTH L. TWIGG, ASSISTANT PROFESSOR, VIRGINIA COMMONWEALTH UNIVERSITY
Ms. TWIGG. Mr. Chairman, members of the Committee, thank you for inviting me here to testify about the International Space Station. You asked that I focus my testimony on the state of the Russian space program, the health of its aerospace industry, and its ability to meet its obligations to the International Space Station.
The common wisdom regarding Russia's difficulties in space is that the issue is money. The argument is this: Their technical capability is intact and if only the Russian government or somebody else were to provide full and reliable funding, then Russia could rapidly resume meeting its own national goals and its international obligations.
But there is ample evidence that questions the validity of that assessment. It is more likely that the events of the last decade have produced degradation of both operational and industrial capability to the point that even a substantial infusion of new funding could not renew previous levels of activity in the short-or medium-term. In other words, money is a necessary, but not a sufficient, short-term fix.
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This is true for two reasons. One is the departure of key scientific and technical personnel, better known as the brain drain problem. Employment in Russia's space sector is down by almost 50 percent from its peak in 1990. The demographic structure of the remaining workforce is even more troubling. More than half of the research and design personnel are now over the age of 55 and less than 1 percent are under the age of 35. The youngest, most energetic engineers have sought more lucrative commercial or financial opportunities, applying their talents to subjects far removed from space. Vital intergenerational transfers of knowledge about space industry and operations have not systematically been taking place.
The second reason that money cannot quickly solve Russia's problems is the ongoing decay of its material infrastructure. Russia has slashed its funding of the aerospace industry over the last decade. The bulk of its government funding has gone to current operations likely to attract foreign cash, such as support for commercial launch activity. This diversion of scarce resources toward current operations and away from long-term investments carries serious long-term consequences. The cumulative impact of years of neglect has been a severely eroded research and development capability and a significant degradation of physical plant.
These two factors, the loss of key personnel and the corrosion of important infrastructure, exacerbate another problem, the basic level of technological sophistication of the Russian space industry. Much of Russia's current exploration and use of space is made possible, primarily, by inertia carried over from the Soviet period, although there's evidence that even those warehoused stockpiles of products, components, and R&D are coming to an end.
The Soviet aerospace industries were held captive to the same perverse incentives that plagued the rest of the Soviet economy, incentives which rewarded quantity or gross output of production, rather than quality, output assortment, or technological innovation. The haphazard process of Russian industrial reform has not enabled the space industry to overcome this Soviet legacy. As a result, modernization programs which would make Russia competitive with other space-faring nations are scarce and frequently unsuccessful.
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Russia is very close to becoming nothing but a contractor for other countries space programs. Basic research and development, which cannot be translated into an immediately saleable product, will continue to suffer, as will long-term investment and planning for whatever uniquely Russian priorities continue to exist in the realm of space. As this trend continues, it will become increasingly difficult for Russia to meet its obligations even to paying customers or to partners in international cooperative space endeavors.
The vast majority of the scientists and engineers remaining in the Russian aerospace sector are talented, creative, honest professionals. But they are trapped within an obsolete, decaying infrastructure that leaves them little room to translate their knowledge and experience into innovative, functioning products. It would take years worth of restored, political priority, resulting in full, consistent streams of funding, as well as a stable political, and economic environment within which to operate for Russia's space industry once again to develop the capacity for activity it demonstrated during the Soviet period.
In closing, I would like to say that I am an enthusiastic proponent of manned spaceflight. I very much hope that the International Space Station succeeds. I also very much hope that the Russian reform effort succeeds. But there are many reasons to question whether NASA's current proposal to provide more money to Russia will further either of those goals.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
[The prepared statement and attachments of Ms. Twigg follow:]
offset folios 1472 to 1478 and 017-018 insert here
Chairman SENSENBRENNER. Thank you, Professor Twigg.
Mr. Oberg.
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TESTIMONY OF JAMES OBERG, AEROSPACE CONSULTANT; AUTHOR, RED STAR IN ORBIT
Mr. OBERG. Thank you. Just to start off, I'd like to applaud Dr. Twigg's assessment of the Russian space industry. The fact that it is not simply a matter of no money; it's a matter of a starvation diet for years. More than a starvation diet, think of the Russian space industry, perhaps, is a top athlete who spent 10 years in the Gulag, where they had been starved, beaten, infected, browbeaten, and cowed by their environment. They have survived, but you cannot bring them back, feed them a good meal, and expect them to compete in the Olympics. The industry itself has been suffering severe cutbacks of capabilities caused by the lack of money, but not solvable by the return of money, in my opinion, and I'm glad to see Dr. Twigg's as well. Thank you.
I would make several points in my opening statements here and give a few details about these points. First, I would like to address the issue of Russia's inability to fulfill its promises. It's not, I believe, due to any temporary conditions which will easily go away. It's not due to the current crisis. It's systemic.
I also want to point out that, as you get closer to first element launch, I believe the assembly strategy, which I term as wobbly in this case, in other words, that wobbliness is a clear indication something is inherently wrong and it's the strategy. Based on recent Russian spacecraft experience elsewhere in their program, I think that the concerns about the Service Module should be heightened. That to believe the Service Module is nearly ready, 98 percent complete, almost ready to fly is an illusion.
I think that NASA, in its appreciation of budgets, overestimates the effectiveness of massive cash infusions in the Russian space industry, both because of the mentioned lack of capabilities remaining there and also because of continued diversions of money within the Russian industry in general and specifically within the Russian space industry, diversions toward private accounts, diversions which I believe NASA has deliberately overlooked.
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Russian attempts recently have come to my knowledge that they're speaking about keeping the Mir going beyond the middle of next year. Although they promised to NASA to shut down the Mir and divert their resources to the International Space Station, they are making serious attempts to find funding to continue Mir and continue using their meager production of support spacecraft for Mir. That would leave none for the International Space Station.
Also, in general, the rush to launch these first elements 6 weeks from now, I believe, is an attempt, perhaps, to prevent proper independent assessment of our situation and hold the whole future of the U.S. space program to a strategy that has continued to fail.
In more detail on these, I'd like to make a few more specific comments, and the written statement has further details. The issue of money for the Russian space program has come up. It's not because they're out of money now. There has been no payment for a long time. Not just no payment. The Russian government has told the Russian Space Agency to take out bank loans, sell off your resources, sell off stock in Energia, for example, which current crisis certainly reduces the value of that stock, but they haven't sold any, anyhow.
And it's not just a matter of not giving money. The Russian government apparently still requires the space industry to pay them the 20 percent value-added tax for purchases of hardware. So the Russian government sits there and tries to make money off the Russian Space Agency, which is not funded by the Russian government.
Now we're facing these problems. And we realize that big space projects are difficult. And that they—as you approach Apollo or approach Skylab or approach the Shuttle, there were major concerns if the program was going to work; it was all going to fit together. But from my own personal experience, watching Apollo and taking part in Shuttle, I see the major difference as we approach the Space Station.
When we worked on the Shuttle, for example, to get all the ducks in the row, as we say in NASA, as they said there, it takes awhile and some—it took us about 2 years, once we got to the launch-minus-12-months point it took 2 years to get all of the ducks in a row before we could proceed. Once they were in a row and in place, we went down from a launch-minus-12-months to launch in about 12 months, 12.5 months because things had fit together. People knew how they came together.
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With Space Station, those ducks aren't in a row and they don't stay in row. As we get close to launch, the ducks are heading out in all different directions. But to be chasing ducks is not what you do 2 months before launch. So there's something, I think, with the organization and management that is leading us—leading some of us to worry a great deal about whether those ducks will ever be in a row or stay there long enough.
Part of the problem may be we're using the wrong measures for success. I hear the comment about their Service Module being 98 percent complete. Is that by weight of hardware? Software weighs nothing and software's a key problem in many of these items. The Russians are saying it cost over $150 million to $200 million to finish the service module. If that's only 2 percent of the program, that says Service Module's a $4 billion, $5 billion program, and, no, it's not. So the 98 percent complete figure is simply—cannot be believed. Well, how close to launch is the Service Module? We don't really know.
An analogy for the Service Module and its readiness should be sought somewhere else in the Russian space program. Not the FGB, which is well-funded by a very vigorous and healthy segment of the Russian space industry with highest standards of Soviet-era hardware. I would suggest a good analogy to judge the Service Module by would be another spacecraft built under similar conditions, the Mars-96 probe, launched 2 years ago. That spacecraft was built under intense budget crunches, begging for foreign assistance, years and years delayed, corruption scandals with the company that was building it. Eventually finished the assembly by kerosene light because they couldn't pay their electricity bills. Launched. It was a disaster. Almost within hours of launch, went out of control and fell back to Earth.
And, yet, the Russian teams that were sent to investigate that launch, Dr. Utkin and his team that were also assisted by Colonel Stafford—General Stafford, could not find any reason for the failure. Even though it had failed, they could not determine that the probe would fail or what the reasons were for it. So having that kind of assessment on current modules, saying, we see no reason to failure, is not encouraging because that assessment has been incorrect in the past.
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As an aside, but the Mars-96 teaches us again one of the issues of how international diplomacy can interfere, severely interfere in sound space engineering and space safety. The Mars-96 carried 18 small plutonium batteries. It's been convenient, both in Washington and Moscow, to believe that those—that plutonium is safely at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean when all evidence suggests otherwise, that it, in fact, came to Earth in the Andes Mountains in the Chile-Bolivia border where nobody has bothered to search for it or even warn the population about it because of the political convenience of ignoring that accident. International diplomacy, again, getting in the way of sound spacecraft engineering.
There are other things that NASA, I believe, has not wanted to see. In fact, I might even go so far as to say has wanted not to see. Is the issue of where the money goes that we send to Russia. Both us, the European Space Agency, France, other Western contractors.
Chairman SENSENBRENNER. Mr. Oberg, you think you could wrap it up. You're a little bit over your 5 minutes.
Mr. OBERG. Thank you, sir. There have been allegations, for example, about these notorious houses at Star City. Mr. Lew, I was hoping you'd be here, so I could give him these pictures of the alleged $500,000 mansions built by cosmonauts with bonus money voted to them by themselves. I hope someone can deliver these to Mr. Lew, because I think he needs to see them.
Lastly, in terms of getting to the FGB launch, I simply want to say that we're in a passion to launch. We're having launch fever again. We have launched this FGB and the U.S. Node along after it and, at some future point, perhaps the modules that have to join it will catch up. Perhaps they'll be ready. Perhaps we can hope they'll be there. But 6 to 8 months of in-flight, 100 million miles of orbit, and we hope that, sometime, the right people will meet the FGB on its way out there.
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I would say that launching the FGB under these conditions into orbit is the longest ''Hail Mary'' pass in history. And that it's a matter of hope. Now history will teach us whether it turns out that that is a bold and inspirational move, which a lot of Mr. Goldin's legacy stands for, or it turns out to be a gross mistake that dooms the program. Thank you.
[The prepared statement and attachments of Mr. Oberg follow:]
offset folios 1488 to 1495, and 019 insert here
[As of Friday, December 18, 1998, Mr. Oberg failed to respond to the written questions submitted by Chairman Sensenbrenner on October 13, 1998.]
Chairman SENSENBRENNER. Thank you very much, Mr. Oberg. Let me say that it is the Chair's intention to strictly impose the 5-minute rule on Members. I will call on Members alternately on the Republican and Democratic sides of the aisle. When the bell rings, you can complete your question or the witness you're directing it to can complete their answer. And I will hold open the possibility of having a second round of questions later on when we see how the first round goes.
So, Mr. Goldin, we have obtained an internal NASA memo dated September 24, 1998, which states, ''To cover the Russian economic situation, the Space Station Program Office is also going to provide Russia with about $660 million over the next 4 years. Code M management has decided that the entire Fiscal Year 1999 installment of $150 million will come out of the Fiscal Year 1999 research programs.''
Why does NASA continue to plan on gutting the Station research accounts to pay for Russia's failures?
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Mr. GOLDIN. I need to look at the document. I'd need to look at the document that you have there to understand the details, but I'll be happy to answer the question in the broader sense first.
With regards to $150 million a year, I had asked our team to take a look, given that the Russian Space Agency was not receiving any money, what it would take to allow—thank you—what it would take to allow us to continue construction and build all our contingency equipment so we could then be in a position to have total control of the Station. They made an assessment to that number and they picked $150 million. It could be more. It could be less. We're working on it. I wanted that to be precise for the record.
We have not made the final decisions about what we will do, but, with regards to research, we are having a slip in the delivery of the Space Station elements. The research program itself is fully funded and we are bringing on the number of researchers that we committed to in this hearing room a number of times. We are phasing the research facilities so that they will be delivered when the on-orbit facility resources are available. So, in that sense, we are moving the research facility money to match up with the delivery on the on-orbit equipment.
Chairman SENSENBRENNER. Thank you. Now, as you recall, I did not want the Russians brought into the critical path in 1993 and 1994. And made my support for the International Space Station contingent upon keeping them out of the critical path.
On June 22, 1994, the President wrote me a letter and he said, ''In keeping with the concerns raised by you and other Members of the House and Senate, I want to assure you that the United States will maintain in-line, autonomous, U.S. flight and life support capability during all phases of Station assembly. As the program continues to develop and NASA reaches subsequent implementing agreements with the Russian Space Agency, then U.S. contractors, in order to achieve program element milestones, the United States will retain in-line autonomous capabilities.''
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Since the Russians are obviously in the critical path, I don't think that promise made by the President to me was kept. So I have two questions of you. First, did anyone in the White House direct you or anyone in NASA to put the Russians in the critical path? And, if so, when?
And, second, if nobody in the White House directed you or anyone at NASA to do that, who in NASA made the decision to ignore a promise the President had made to the Congress?
Mr. GOLDIN. I don't recollect anyone in the White House telling me or our employees to intentionally put Russia in the critical path. With regards to steps we were taking to respond to that letter, within the finances that we had made available to us to address this problem, we had a sequential retiring of the risk of having the Russians come out of the critical path.
In the spring of 1994, we provided U.S. crew health care system. The summer of 1994, we provided O2, N2 gas resupply for the joint airlock. In 1994, we bought the FGB and we're no longer reliant on the Russian contribution for this first orbit-keeping element. We provided early U.S. power so we were no longer reliant on the Russian solar power platform in the summer of 1995. We scored the U.S. lab for environment——
Chairman SENSENBRENNER. Mr. Goldin, you know, I appreciate that, but that's not answering the question because the Russians are in the critical path. They have been in the critical path for a long period of time now. You know, either they—if they weren't in the critical path when the President wrote me the letter in June of 1994, how did they get in the critical path? And if they were in the critical path when the President wrote me a letter, was the President's letter inaccurate? That's what I want to find out.
Mr. GOLDIN. I can only tell you that given the resources we had, we took every step possible to make sure that the probability of the Russians being in the critical path would be extremely low.
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Chairman SENSENBRENNER. But that's not what the President's letter said. The President's letter said that they wouldn't be in the critical path. I am trying to find out if the President was not truthful in sending the letter or if somebody in NASA ignored a presidential directive, because that's why we're in the situation that we're at now.
I would refresh your recollection that when we had a hearing before the Space Subcommittee February 13, 1995, Mr. Roemer asked you, ''Do you feel we are light years ahead, given the internal changes in Russia and what they can do in terms of performance in this joint venture?'' You replied, Mr. Goldin, ''So far, they have been performing, but at the direction and insistence of Mr. Sensenbrenner, we have taken some very important actions so that Russia is not in the critical path and we are working on contingency plans.''
Was your statement that Russia is not in the critical path true at that time?
Mr. GOLDIN. At that time, we did not believe they were, and we had plans for a number of things like a propulsion module which at the time we were studying. We presented those plans forward and did not receive the funding.
Chairman SENSENBRENNER. You know, with all due respect, we were dependent upon the Service Module for the crew quarters, for the reboost capability, and for the life support system, and that was in 1995. You can't make any of us believe that the Service Module is not a critical path item, given the fact that the Russian delays in the service module have cost us lots more money than if we had just paid the Russians to build it at the time they started falling behind. Do you want me to believe that?
Mr. GOLDIN. At the time, we had confidence in what they were doing. We tried to sequentially bring online those things that we felt would keep them off the critical path within the resources that we were given.
Chairman SENSENBRENNER. Okay. My time is up. Mr. Brown.
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Mr. BROWN of California. Mr. Chairman, I ask the Committee's permission to switch my time with Mr. Roemer, in view of the fact that the President has asked him to come down to the White House to help him out of his problems.
[Laughter.]
Chairman SENSENBRENNER. Well, if you would like a good excuse not to have to go down to the White House, I would entertain that request. But the gentleman from Indiana is recognized.
Mr. ROEMER. I thank the Chairman and I thank Mr. Brown for, I think, helping me out, I am not quite sure.
Mr. Chabrow, you said in your opening statement that you thought that we needed an aspirin for a headache and you hoped it didn't turn into a migraine. I think we are way past that point. I think we are trying to take an aspirin for a brain tumor at this point, given the problems with the cost overruns, with the Space Station, and the meltdown and the implosion in Russia with their economy.
Now, you have said in the past—back in February, I believe, when you were here—that at that point, before the Russians were experiencing these problems, that you estimated that we had a per-month overrun projection of somewhere between $140 and $230 million per month. Is that correct?
Mr. CHABROW. That's correct.
Mr. ROEMER. That was before the Russian problems, is that correct?
Mr. CHABROW. That's correct.
Mr. ROEMER. Now, what would you base those cost overrun projections to be?
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Mr. CHABROW. I would estimate that if the—okay, that's good, you were asking for the overrun, not how much money they would spend. I would estimate that the delay could cost an extra $140 to $160 million a month.
Mr. ROEMER. On top of the $200 million per month——
Mr. CHABROW. Yes.
Mr. ROEMER [continuing]. That you estimated 6 months ago.
Mr. CHABROW. No, no, no. If it was $200 million a month that we spent—this was for the delay—I would say the delay is what I'm really saying now, because they cause you to delay. It's not overrun, overrun, like a person that's overrunning month by month. It's causing a slip. The slip would cost to the tune of approximately $170 million a month.
Mr. ROEMER. Let's not be too clever with semantics here.
Mr. CHABROW. I'm not being clever. I am trying to get the right cost.
Mr. ROEMER. So we are talking about cost overruns that are caused by delays and cost overruns that are caused by the Russians and the prime contractor problems in NASA. Given the addition of all those problems, what do you estimate now, as a sworn witness, that these figures are going to reach per month?
Mr. CHABROW. Right now, we could say at the time we are in now, we are overrunning $23 million a month more. That's it, $23 million.
Mr. ROEMER. Over what you estimated back in February.
Mr. CHABROW. That's correct.
Mr. ROEMER. And does that include the bailout that Mr. Goldin is estimating now for what we would pay the Russians for their purported research time and space time on the Space Station?
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Mr. CHABROW. You know, I am glad you asked me that because there is a trade that is made, and what Dan probably did not bring out is that research would be done within that $60 million that they are going to transfer over there, that the cosmonauts would be doing research in space during that time.
Mr. ROEMER. But my question, Mr. Chabrow, is does the additional money that we've seen in the paper, somewhere between $650 million and $1.2 billion, is that added into your estimates as well, too?
Mr. CHABROW. Yes, yes.
Mr. ROEMER. Okay. Mr. Chairman, I'm glad you brought up the critical path question. Last year I offered an amendment to take the Russians out of the critical path in this Committee. We did not receive adequate votes to take the Russians out of the critical path. I hope that when I offer that amendment in the future, that we can get this Committee to agree to take that step.
I was delighted to hear Professor Twigg and Professor Oberg give their frank statements about the dangers in this program, not only with the cost overruns and the Russian problems, but that money is not going to solve this problem, throwing it at the Russians to try to bring in their foreign and scientific participation.
Dr. Twigg, your statement, if I can clarify it into a sentence or two, that Mr. Goldin is proposing sending $1.2 billion over there to buy their participation and solve the problem. Is this money going to solve the problem?
Ms. TWIGG. I would say no. Russia's problems are not just financial problems. They are deeply imbedded infrastructural problems that took a long time to develop and therefore, they will take a long time to solve.
Mr. ROEMER. And Mr. Oberg, you said that in addition to the Russian problems and the financial problems, that NASA doesn't even seem to have their ducks in a line from a science and engineering viewpoint to go forward on the Space Station. That there are other problems here in the assembly sequence. Can you clarify your remarks.
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Mr. OBERG. Well, there's going to be some dynamics involved here, and one has to realize that this project is built to be flexible in terms of assembly, so that a certain level of alteration in a sequence should be expected with every flight.
But prior to the first flight, though, we keep adding more flights. We had a six-sequence flight, a mission 2A through 7A. We have added four additional flights, 2A.1, 2A.2, 5A.1, and 7A.1, to carry additional material, and we haven't even begun to fly yet.
And the Russian commitments, we look at the assembly sequence published October 2nd, it talks about having the Russians make 10 launches in the Year 2000 of Soyuz and Progress vehicles and a docking module. They only make four or five or six now with Mir and they are stretching it.
They have recently begun negotiations, and I noticed in the paper this morning about Yuri Maslyukov, the First Deputy Prime Minister in Russia, he is leading the negotiations with the Western financiers to find money to continue Mir for another 2 to 5 years. And he is a protege of Prime Minister Primakov.
So if there is funding discovered for keeping Mir going, there won't be Soyuz or Progress for ISS. There won't be 10 of them in the Year 2000; there won't be two of them in the Year 2000. They will be bought up by other competitors, so their limited production capability is limited to begin with, and it's being threatened by cash customers in competition with ISS.
Mr. ROEMER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman SENSENBRENNER. The gentleman's time has expired, and he is sent to the White House with everybody's best wishes.
[Laughter.]
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The gentleman from Florida, Dr. Weldon.
Mr. WELDON of Florida. I thank the Chairman. I just want to reiterate that I remain a very, very strong supporter of the Space Station program. I have been supportive of Russian involvement, but I have been critical of having them in the critical pathway.
In many ways, I feel like we are acting out a Greek tragedy here. Here we are again, one more time, talking about the same problem that has been besetting the Space Station effort for the past 4 years. That is, the Russian failure to be able to deliver.
I'd like to just bring up an article that appeared in the Washington Times, and I would like to submit it for the record, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman SENSENBRENNER. Without objection.
[The article referred to follows:]
"The Official Committee record contains additional material here."
Mr. WELDON of Florida. ''Subsidizing the Kleptocracy,'' and this article is based on a report that came out of the Center for Strategic and International Studies. I have a copy of the report right here, and it talks about 40 percent of companies, 60 percent of State-owned enterprises, and between 50 and 85 percent of Russia banks being controlled by organized crime. Additionally, they talk about up to as much as $1 billion a month being funneled out of Russia into Cyprus.
Mr. Goldin, are you aware of this information in this report, and in particular, are your superiors at the White House, Jacob Lew and Strobe Talbott? I am extremely disappointed they are not here. And in many ways, I am sorry I have to be directing these questions to you, because I honestly feel you are trying to make the best out of a very, very bad situation.
Are these people who you have to answer to aware of what you are working with over there in Russia?
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Mr. GOLDIN. I can't answer for what's in somebody else's mind or someone else's awareness. I would presume that they have read that article in the Times like I have read that article in the Times. I can tell you that on the specific things that we do, we negotiate very specific activities. We cannot control how all of Russia works.
But when we negotiated $400 million worth of activity for American operations on the Mir, we got much more value for that money. We bought the FGB. We got value for that money. We treated it as a firm, fixed-price contract.
For the $60 million we have planned here, we have 50 measurable tasks that we will be looking at for delivery as we pay out the money. We are operating this in a very clear, open manner. What happens in the rest of Russia, all the rumors I hear, I let other people deal with. For what I am responsible and accountable for, I could certify.
Mr. WELDON of Florida. Well, you remind me of Ronald Reagan's old expression: Trust, but verify. You are saying that you are going to verify every milestone and that you are going to be able to report back to us in the Congress on the success of the Russians or the failure of them to perform, correct?
Mr. GOLDIN. We have 50 milestones that we have identified for the Service Module. I think there are 20 for the Service Module and 30 for the Soyuz and the Progress. We have the inspection points listed and we intend to go down that point.
In prior hearings, we have been asked to be sensitive to this issue and we have negotiated that in the protocol for the $60 million.
Mr. WELDON of Florida. Well, I am very glad to hear that you are going to be doing that, and I am personally going to be looking forward to hearing from you and from your staff in the months ahead on the Russian success or failure thereof.
Let me move on to another subject that I think is very important, and that is, Russian time on the Space Station. Now, as I understand it, in exchange for this money, we are going to get more research time on the Space Station, is that correct? But it's research time that will be performed on our experiments by Russian cosmonauts.
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Is there any discussion of getting U.S. astronauts more time on the Space Station, and considering we are having to bail them out so much financially, why should they be continuing to be able to have Russian cosmonauts on the Station or the same number of Russian cosmonauts on the Station?
Mr. GOLDIN. What we have negotiated is to get more research time. In order to do productive research in space, you need astronauts to do it. So with this agreement, we have been able to double the amount of astronaut hours attending to the research. That was the idea behind it.
In addition to that, we've gotten a significant increase in stowage space, which would allow us to phase the delivery of the research equipment and make our research much more productive. Why the Russians? Because the Russians are familiar with the Russian equipment and we would want to have at least a Russian on board so we could do other operations as we go along, because all the time won't be dedicated to research.
So we did what we believed was in the interest of enhancing the U.S. space program and getting a quid pro quo. In fact, last time I was here, there was a set of charts showing about the research time from astronauts and that the Committee felt we ought to go get more research time for the American astronauts based on our money going to Russia. That was the approach.
Chairman SENSENBRENNER. The gentleman's time has expired. The gentleman from Tennessee, Mr. Gordon.
Mr. GORDON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chabrow, in your final report, you recommended that NASA carry out the Space Station program within the available funding, deleting or deferring content as necessary.
Is that a realistic option at this point in the Space Station program, and if so, what specific content deletions or deferrals would your task force recommend?
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Mr. CHABROW. I think we made up a list at that time. I have a list of those items, and I don't actually have them here. Most of the things we are doing now are really adding. I went through a list that they had and—if I had a chart here, I'm sorry, I will give you an answer.
Mr. GORDON. Well, it looks to me like we are, at home what we call between a rock and a hard place. Mr. Roemer would take us one direction where we say that we made a good effort on the Space Station, but it's just going to be too expensive and we should pull the plug and put those funds into other parts of NASA. I think Mr. Goldin has done an excellent job with a very complex problem.
On the other hand, we can say okay, let's just buckle up and recognize we are going to write a bigger check and move forward. Unless there is some kind of a third option of, as you say, deleting and deferring and making this less expensive.
Now, are you just working around the edges, or does your report really have some significant suggestions on how this thing can be brought under budget?
Mr. CHABROW. No, it does. As I recall, some of the items that I said were to move out spares that we don't need upfront, to take some of the research that can be done downstream when we don't have the items up there, and have them done downstream. The others were delete some of the tests and have them replaced by MEIT. There was a more painful testing. I am just getting them in my head now.
And the other one was when the question was asked about the $1.3 billion that was being sent over, would that fix the ''Russian problem.'' That doesn't fix the ''Russian problem.'' What it does is vector on ISS work that is being done. And those are the areas that will be done at Energia and those are the areas that will be done also at Khrunichev.
So there would be a direct hit. That was in answer to the other question that was asked, because I wanted to make that clear.
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Mr. GORDON. Now are you just extending the cost? Increasing the cost, but extending it over a longer period of time, with your recommendations, rather than saving significant money and bringing this in under budget?
Mr. CHABROW. Well, what we had brought out was there were certain issues that they could do to actually mitigate risk. And that was by putting in, as you recall, MEIT 3 and putting in things earlier that would save money downstream. Those things have been done. Much of those, many of those things have been done.
We are not adding cost. What we are doing is putting in cost now to save cost downstream.
Mr. GORDON. So NASA is taking your advice and already doing that?
Mr. CHABROW. They have. In many areas, the answer is yes, they have.
Mr. GORDON. So if the costs continue to go up——
Mr. CHABROW. Well, you know, the costs that you are really saying now is that there's a slip. That's the major item. There are things that do occur in programs of this size and this complexity, such as testing problems. That's why you have testing, to bring out those bugs so they happen on the ground and they don't happen in space. That's normal.
All we are doing is saying now, that a program of this size going through testing, everyone is not meeting the dates. When they don't meet the dates, you have a schedule slip. That's where the cost arises.
Mr. GORDON. Mr. Goldin, are there additional efficiencies that can be brought in? Can the Space Station be altered in some way? And if not, how much is too much? Where do we spend too much? Where do you say, we just can't afford this any longer?
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Mr. GOLDIN. We have been building a modular spacecraft. We have commitments to our international partners that need the resources, the electricity, the pressurized volume, the transportation, that they are counting on.
If we were to cut the Space Station off early, in essence we would damage agreements we have with partners who have been doing very valuable work and spending $9 billion.
Mr. GORDON. Okay, so we really can't do anything there.
Mr. GOLDIN. Now, in terms of efficiencies——
Mr. GORDON. Let me just ask, because I don't think we can do much more. I think anything that can be done, I am satisfied you are trying to do. If you saw something out there, you would certainly try to make it better. How much is too much? When do we have to take a really hard look at this and say that it is getting out of hand?
Mr. GOLDIN. I don't believe we are at that point yet.
Mr. GORDON. Where would that be, sir? Could you give us a benchmark?
Mr. GOLDIN. I would say if we went for a couple of years and didn't launch anything and continued to flail around on the ground, that would be a good reason not to do it.
Mr. GORDON. That, within the current budget?
Mr. GOLDIN. I believe the budget is going to have to be addressed here. And let me be clear as to why I say that. I got a better answer, and I want to provide some perspective.
NASA signed up to what no other government agency signed up to when we saw the results of the elections of 1992 and 1994. And I want to provide this as background so there is some understanding of why we are where we are.
With the support of the Administration and the Congress, NASA signed up to do some very tough things. We said we would cut the costs of operating the Shuttle by $1 billion a year and improve its reliability. The immediate cry was, you can't do that. And there were loads of experts that came into this chamber and talked about the safety of that Shuttle, and we have few on-orbit anomalies, and we have thousands of people less working on it.
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We went ahead and said we are going to launch a probe to Mars, and we are going to do it in 3 years and not 10 years.
Mr. GORDON. I don't mean to be disrespectful, but I have heard all this.
Mr. GOLDIN. No, no. I'd like to——
Chairman SENSENBRENNER. The gentleman's time has expired.
Mr. GORDON. I want to see you be successful, but we've got to have a plan.
Mr. GOLDIN. Okay, my bottom line is this: We have cut $40 billion out of the 5-year plan. Everyone was aware of it every step of the way and everyone was with us. Forty billion dollars, I want to say it again. At every step of the way, with each budget justification, we fully articulated what our program plan was and the fact that anyone is surprised today amazes me.
The basic issue is this: When it comes to the Space Station, getting additional money for the Space Station never really happens. So we keep going in circles. So in my mind, this gentleman here and his team did the Nation a service and identified the amounts of money that it would take to complete the Space Station.
The people back here, Joe Rothenberg, Gretchen McLain, and the people around the country, are doing an outstanding job and I won't accept they are doing a sloppy, overrun job. I won't accept that they want to launch things early just to make a pizzazz in space. They are representing their country well.
I would say that this program will have to be terminated unless there is some commitment by this government that says we have to put the money into the Space Station that it needs. And if we don't get the resources that we need, that outside experts have testified to, that my own NASA people have assessed, then and only then, would I say let's terminate it.
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If we think we are going to keep taking this Space Station program each year with this budget gap, recognizing that we have problems and not funding it, and then reflecting on the work wonderful people are doing here and in Russia, that is a reason to terminate it. So I think we have to face up to the costs that we are talking about that we need.
Chairman SENSENBRENNER. Mr. Goldin, I think Mr. Gordon and I will make you a deal. Next time we bring you up here, can you bring Mr. Lew and Mr. Talbott along so that we can get the commitments out of the Administration and out of the OMB to do it, because Congress can't do it itself, and I think we recognize that.
Mr. GOLDIN. Well, I'd also like to add that this is a decision that I can't make, nor the Administration, but we all have to make. There is a budget deal that's gone into place and maybe there isn't money for it.
But it would be my vote, as the NASA Administrator, if we cannot fund this properly because of the budget deal that would break the budget agreement, then maybe we ought to cancel the Space Station, because we are destroying good work by terrific people.
And for me to sit here and hear a lot of the words is like a dagger through my heart, because I know the quality of work that's going on here and around the country.
Chairman SENSENBRENNER. The gentleman's time has expired.
The gentleman from Minnesota, Mr. Gutknecht, is recognized with the proviso he talks nothing about Monday night's football game.
[Laughter.]
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Mr. GUTKNECHT. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I appreciate your bringing that up.
[Laughter.]
Mr. Goldin, I think all of us feel rather uncomfortable this morning, because we admire you, we admire the work that your team does. I think among all the bureaucracies, you are among the only ones who have stepped forward and said we are going to try to do more with less. So we do admire you.
But my old German grandmother had an expression. Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me. She didn't even go to the third iteration of that. And it seems to me that we are almost to that level.
Just a month ago, the OMB sat right there and told us that they believed that the Russians would be able to come up with their end of this bargain. I don't know if you were listening carefully to yourself as you testified just a few moments ago, but in some respects, what you were saying to this Committee is that I am willing to bet the entire program on a partner which has disappointed us at every turn of the way.
And I hope when you go back—and we all respect and admire you and the work that you do—but I hope you will go back and play back the tape of this, because I suspect someone in Houston or at Cape Canaveral or something is taping this. Because that's basically what you told us.
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And you've also told us that a few months ago, or a few years ago, Russia was not in the critical path. Now they are. Now we have a partner that may or may not be able to perform, whether or not we give them the money.
Let me just also say that I, as one member of this Committee, wear two hats. I believe in scientific research, I believe it is a very fundamental responsibility of the Federal Government to fund that research, and I think that research in space is critically important.
On the other hand, I am also a member of the Budget Committee, and I am delighted that we have a balanced budget for the first time since I was in high school. That didn't happen easily; it happened because we made some tough choices over the last 3 or 4 years.
But I'll tell you, it's very difficult to go back to that Budget Committee and say we need more and more money for NASA or we need this amount of money for the Space Station, and we need this amount of money for some of these programs. Frankly, it disturbs me when I hear you talking about our Russian partners, because as I understand it, the reports are that the taxpayers from the United States have funded about $43 billion that's gone into Russia over the last 3 or 4 years.
And right now, we've got budget negotiations going on as to whether or not we are going to give the IMF an additional $18 billion. And yet many of us look and say we see almost no evidence of any real improvement in the Russian economy. The average Russian is in worse shape today than they were a year ago.
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I guess the only question I have for you, and then I want to yield some time to my colleague from Florida, is where will this extra money come from? Is it $60 million? Is it $660 million? Or will it be a billion? Or will it be more? Where will that money come from ultimately?
Mr. GOLDIN. First, let me clear up a misconception. Some of the money that I'm talking about is not going to go to Russia, but to go to build the equipment that we need to get a much more robust Station so we could have more total control for ourselves. It's not a question of sending money to Russia.
If you got that impression from what I said, I am sorry. That is not what I was saying. And there is a number of $1.2 billion being thrown around. Half of that is to buy specific goods and services from the Russians for the near-term, and another $600 million is the long-term solution to have complete U.S. capability to operate the Space Station. So that's my first point.
The second point, where will it come from. This has been a very tough issue, which is what I was really focusing my answer to Mr. Gordon's question about. We need to find additional resources, and I have been assured by the Administration because we told them that we needed to spend the $60 million; and in 1999, we'd have to spend $290 million, $150 million of which would be buying specific goods and services from Russia, $140 million of which would be to build U.S. backup capability, so that we would not be in this situation in the future. And then we have an estimate going through the remaining years.
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I have been assured that consideration will be given to that and we will have that resolved in the Fiscal Year 2000 budget. The point I was making to Mr. Gordon not being able to talk about embargo date in discussion with the Administration, he asked me, where would the problem occur, and my sense is if a method of financing that within the budget cap is not found, I don't know how we could build the Space Station. That is the way, I think, I would hope you'd understand what I was saying.
Mr. GUTKNECHT. And that's what I said, that I think it almost sounds like you are betting the farm right now. I think that's a bad bet.
Mr. GOLDIN. Well, again, I'd like to come back and say let's take a look at what we did and not just look at one line item in the NASA budget. There have been people who wanted NASA to do a lot of things, yet our budget keeps coming down and people ask where is the rest of the money going to. I can only work with the money that we have.
Look at other federal agencies and ask how many of those agencies' budgets have come down not in funny money terms, but in real terms for the last 5 years. We now have a problem in saying we turned back $40 billion to deficit reduction, we need some help for a billion or two. We think that's reasonable activity, given the complexity of the job we have.
This is something I can't decide, but we can't create money out of magical places. And I think our record of what we've done is worthy of that consideration. This is something that has to be discussed, and each time we'd have a discussion about contingency plans. I could have a book full of contingency plans since 1994. To carry out a contingency plan takes money. We can't do it any other way. And I'm saying if we don't get some additional resources, we cannot do what we are saying we are going to do.
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Chairman SENSENBRENNER. The gentleman's time is expired. The gentleman from California, Mr. Brown.
Mr. BROWN of California. Mr. Goldin, I am glad you made the statement that you have just finished making. I have been making that statement for the last 4 or 5 years, but didn't seem to be having much of an impact. Maybe you or I or both of us are going to have to resign to call attention to the need for that additional, or some part of that additional $40 billion, which has been cut from the NASA budget over this period of time. I think that's the main problem.
Now, with regard to some of the things you are doing to keep the program on track, are we, in effect, saying that we no longer can count on the Russian government to meet its commitments and that we are, therefore, seeking to deal directly with either Russian contractors or are going to replace the matter covered by the Russian commitment with a U.S. commitment.
It seems to me that your testimony indicates that's the direction that we've already moved in.
Mr. GOLDIN. Russia is having very difficult financial times, very difficult. It's not unlike things that have happened in history before. But we have to go build a Space Station, and given the fact that we have waited for resources to go from the Russian government to the Russian Space Agency and it hasn't happened.
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We have 50 people there monitoring the quality of the work and we believe they do have high quality work going on. It is our assessment that we need to focus very rifled approaches to buy specific goods and services to give us the specific activities we need to get through the next few years, and in parallel with that, bring along the contingency plan that we have presented to this Committee and the Congress over the last year-and-a-half and to have the resources to do it.
But it would be a rifled approach. It is not throwing money at Russia, as some have described it. It is a specific detailed set of negotiations of very specific activities. Yes, if you heard me say that, that's absolutely correct.
And the other thing I have to say one more time. I said it to Mr. Gutknecht. We cannot do it by making believe we have money to do it. I know there is a lot of discussion about the Congress being upset with the Administration. My problem is we have a bill and I don't see people adding significant amounts of money to the NASA bill to solve the problems that they are asking us to solve.
It is a real dilemma for us, and in the end, I get the budget we get and we have to do the best we can with that budget.
Chairman SENSENBRENNER. Will the gentleman yield at this point?
Mr. BROWN of California. I'd be happy to yield.
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Chairman SENSENBRENNER. The HUD–VA Conference Committee Report for Appropriations fully funded NASA at the level the Administration requested.
Mr. BROWN of California. In light of what you have described, do you feel it would be appropriate or desirable to renegotiate the partnership role with the Russians, or would that produce undesirable political consequences in our relationships with the Russians?
Mr. GOLDIN. I believe a broad renegotiation at this point gets into the shotgun approach. I think what we need to do is to take each issue a step at a time, and in effect, we have renegotiated a small part of our relationship with the $60 million. Because what we are proposing to do, instead of having the thousands of hours of Russian astronaut time available to do specific tasks related to Russia, they will now be working on specific tasks for American research. So, in effect, we are doing just that.
Mr. BROWN of California. But didn't we readjust our partnership arrangement with the Canadians when they indicated they were unable to fulfill their commitments on a much smaller basis?
Mr. GOLDIN. Yes, we did. And we likewise worked it in a stepwise approach item by item. What we intend to do is over the months ahead, work with the Russians on the next specific activities so we could get into that approach.
Mr. BROWN of California. I suggest this because there is a lot of people who feel that the Russians are not suffering any consequences from their failures, and that we need to, in effect, say that because you have failed to keep your commitment, your role is going to have to be modified.
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I think that would make some members of Congress feel a little bit happier.
Mr. GOLDIN. Well, I come from a school which says when someone is in trouble, you don't extract blood from them. What you do is encourage them to perform. I believe if we want to extract blood, we have the wrong program to do that.
The Russians are punishing themselves enough. They are humiliated and embarrassed by what has happened to their economy. And we don't have to inflict any pain on them. They know how much trouble they are in, and the problems in Russia are well beyond the Space Station. This is the one area where there is a sense of pride in Russia.
And I'd like to close by saying yes, I have thought of resignation. I won't. I won't because I'm committed to this country and this program. No. In my case, I would not consider it.
Mr. BROWN of California. I'm not resigning either, Mr. Goldin.
[Laughter.]
One final question: The problems we are experiencing here, I think, have to be expected when we are pioneering a new, large-scale international approach to anything. But I am talking basically of big science.
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Are you doing anything, do you have any institutional capability for analyzing and recording the problems that you're experiencing, so that we can benefit as we move into a new century of big science in which we may replicate these kinds of problems many times over?
Mr. GOLDIN. We are definitely doing that. In fact, I have just promoted Alan Ladwig to be my Senior Policy Advisor, and he is undertaking an approach that will systematically document it so we will learn from these mistakes.
Mr. BROWN of California. It'll be good material for graduate courses in universities for years to come.
Mr. CHABROW. Sir, I was going to ask you, is there an opportunity—I don't know the rules—but is there an opportunity for me to add one word to this, or is this out of form?
Chairman SENSENBRENNER. The thing is that I have 1, 2, 3, 4, I have got about 15 people—
Mr. CHABROW. A quick word.
Chairman SENSENBRENNER. Mr. Chabrow, can we give a couple of the other members a shot at this. They've been very patient.
Mr. CHABROW. Sure.
Chairman SENSENBRENNER. The gentleman from California, Mr. Rohrabacher.
Mr. ROHRABACHER. I would agree with my esteemed colleague, Mr. Brown, that we have to learn with these large projects. Unfortunately, however, it does not seem, Mr. Brown, that we are learning. It seems that what is being proposed to us today is not changing the way we are dealing with Russia, learning what didn't work before and changing to a new pattern of involvement with Russia, but instead just throwing some more money into the same relationship.
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First of all, let me look at that in particular. Didn't we have a successful relationship with the Russians dealing with the FGB? Wasn't that a pretty successful operation?
Mr. GOLDIN. It was very successful.
Mr. ROHRABACHER. And that was done as a contract with Khrunichev, with a private entity, is that correct? Okay. Now, what hasn't worked with Russia is this partnership, and with the Russian government. And that is what seems to be failing. Would I be too bold to be saying that?
Mr. GOLDIN. Well, I think you are right and you are wrong. You are right in the sense the partnership with the Russian government has not been successful. Because of their financial condition, they have not financed the Russian Space Agency to the level that they should.
Mr. ROHRABACHER. Dan, let me just say this. The explanation of why it was unsuccessful, you may or may not be correct. If they had more money, they still might not have been successful. Perhaps it's not a money issue in Russia, but an honesty issue or a competence issue.
And dealing with that group, the Russian government, where it's hard to pin down accountability, money tends to disappear. And as you know, I was just over there talking to some of the people of Energia and the other Russians who are involved directly with twisting metal and putting it together and they confer with that analysis, that it's not just money, it's that money tends to disappear in their government rather than get to them to actually do it.
So wouldn't it be wiser on our part to restructure the program so that it did become a corporate relationship between our corporation and their corporation, where people could be held accountable and money would flow, as it normally does here in a corporate—shouldn't we be teaching them how to structure their situation, rather than letting them teach us how to do things in a socialist way from government to government?
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Mr. GOLDIN. In this particular circumstance, if we could have contracted with a corporate entity, it would have worked. The dilemma we had was what would be the quid pro quo from the corporation in return for $60 million. Only the Russian Space Agency is authorized to provide the astronaut hours and the storage time because they own the Service Module.
As part of the next activities we have, I think there are ample opportunities to go government to government, but in this specific circumstance, that was the case. Second—
Mr. ROHRABACHER. Dan, before you go on, to me, that is an illusion. You are not restructuring because of this illusion that we are going to create and get some quid pro quo. I think as long as we deal in that structure, the money will disappear again.
You know, we heard from Mr. Gutknecht about the old German expression, fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me. The third one, I think, is fool me a third time, shame on my mother because she didn't raise me right. And in this particular case, somebody wasn't raised right, because they ain't learning from their lessons.
Mr. GOLDIN. The money has not disappeared on one element that we have contracted on a firm, fixed price basis with Russia. This is what I want——
Mr. ROHRABACHER. No, no, no. That's just in your narrow area. That's perhaps the only money that was under your purview that disappeared. We've had lots of money disappear in Russia.
Mr. GOLDIN. The money that NASA contracted in Russia with private entities and the government, we got specifically what we asked for, exactly and specifically what we asked for.
Mr. ROHRABACHER. And now we are contracting again with the Russian Space Agency, rather than with that corporation. I think, again, Congress tried to suggest before that we not put the Russians in the critical path, and whatever happened, they ended up in the critical path.
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We've tried to suggest don't go through this Russian Space Agency, one last area. And it seems to be happening again. Let me just in one other area here. There is evidence that suggests that there are people who were transferring technology, Russian rocket technology, to hostile powers, Iran and others.
Shouldn't we predicate—and I'm sorry, Mr. Talbott isn't here—but shouldn't we predicate any of these deals that we are talking about on, at the very least, that they are not going to be transferring rocket technology to people who might want to blow us up?
Mr. GOLDIN. I am responsible for America's civil space program. As an American, I want to be safe in my own country. I cannot comment on the implementation of what you just asked and I think that's an appropriate question to the foreign service community.
Chairman SENSENBRENNER. The gentleman's time——
Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Chairman, let me say just to that last point, is that's why Mr. Talbott was invited here. The fact is that this is not just a NASA situation, this is a U.S. government foreign policy and NASA technology problem. And this Administration is not being responsible by just putting you on the hot seat when Mr. Talbott has some of these foreign policy issues to answer as well.
Thank you.
Chairman SENSENBRENNER. Well, let me say that the Chair reserves the right to subpoena Mr. Talbott if he consistently refuses to come.
The gentlewoman from Texas, Ms. Johnson.
Ms. JOHNSON of Texas. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I'd like to preface my question by these remarks. I noticed here that a letter was written to Mr. Talbott and to Mr. Lew on October 2nd, which was this past Friday. This is Wednesday. The earliest they could have gotten this mail is this past Monday or perhaps Tuesday, which was yesterday.
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So in this letter, it said, ''Certainly, a failure on your part to appear would suggest to the American people that the Administration does not care about our space program.'' I happen to believe that's a bit unfair. And fairness really is or should not be partisan, but this has real, real taint of ''Beltway gotcha.''
Chairman SENSENBRENNER. Will the gentlewoman yield?
Ms. JOHNSON of Texas. These people are very, very busy and we know that because we are, as well. We are in the last part of negotiations and I don't think it is fair. I will not yield until I have completed my statement, because it is rare, Mr. Chairman, that I am brought to this point of emotion because I believe so strongly in fairness.
But this is totally unfair, and I feel that the record ought to reflect that. I don't believe they will have to be subpoenaed to come. I think they will have to be given adequate invitation and notice.
Chairman SENSENBRENNER. Will the gentlewoman yield now?
Ms. JOHNSON of Texas. Not quite. I'm not quite finished. I don't want to use up my time.
Mr. Goldin, according to Mr. Oberg's testimony, he has said here NASA continues to use creative bookkeeping to conceal the billions of dollars of extra cost associated with the Russian partnership. Could you please comment on that? It's called the Russian access tax that he has listed here and that they will pay every Shuttle launch to carry cargo.
I went to Russia and I am quite aware of their situation. I agree with your earlier assessment, Mr. Goldin, of how they feel and where they are financially. But I do have concerns about Mr. Oberg's statement here. Could you comment?
Mr. OBERG. May I explain that, please.
Ms. JOHNSON of Texas. I want Mr. Goldin first, please, if you don't mind.
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Mr. GOLDIN. I have no idea what Mr. Oberg is talking about. He is challenging the basic integrity of NASA. If he has documents, let him come forward with it and let's have an open hearing on it.
I believe we have done everything possible to be open with this Congress and I take it as a personal affront on every NASA employee the tone with which Mr. Oberg has stated that.
Chairman SENSENBRENNER. Mr. Oberg.
Mr. OBERG. Let's explain what we are talking about here. This, what I call a NASA access tax, is the performance penalty that we pay to get into a 52 inclination orbit. That by flying the Shuttle into an orbit the Russians can reach, we are giving up performance. The numbers are about 36,000 pounds payload to an orbit launching east from Florida. About 12,000 of that is lost to go to a higher inclination orbit.
NASA has performed excellent research to add back in 12,000 pounds by improving performance, so we are back up to 36,000 for the Shuttle to the Russian orbit. But that 12,000 pound bonus would also apply to the eastern orbit, the one due east, so we could have launched 48,000 pounds with these additional factors due east.
So instead of launching 48,000 pounds to the orbit convenient for the United States, we are launching 36,000 to an orbit the Russians can reach. That means that every fourth Shuttle flight to the orbit we are building the Station in, every fourth Shuttle flight is only required because of making it accessible to the Russians.
Over the history of the program of 80 to 100 Shuttle flights to ISS, that's 20, 25 or more Shuttle flights at half a billion dollars each. It's this performance impact, that the sacrifice we are making to get to the higher orbit that I refer to in quotes as the Russian access tax.
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And if the Russians provided more than that value of services, it would be a bargain. But the bookkeeping that NASA uses is that Shuttle flights are free. That the Shuttle flights to support the Station are not part of the Station construction costs. That is accepted bookkeeping for the Shuttle construction.
But for total Station operations, rather, you have to count in how many Shuttle flights. The higher inclination orbit requires more Shuttle flights, which have to be paid for out of our pockets.
If you balance off that against what the Russians can provide in additional support, additional supply flights, additional modules and you come out ahead, then the Russian participation is a bargain. But with the Russians cutting back in the amount of supply flights, additional Shuttle flights being made, we are paying basically a performance penalty for this higher inclination orbit at every launch. Whether the Russians drop out or not, we will pay that penalty for the rest of the history of the Space Station. I'm not insulting anyone's integrity. I am insulting—not insulting, I am criticizing the full disclosure of the bookkeeping.
Chairman SENSENBRENNER. The gentlewoman's time has expired.
Ms. JOHNSON of Texas. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman SENSENBRENNER. At this point in the record, I would like to ask unanimous consent that the invitation letters to Mr. Talbott and Mr. Lew be inserted in the record, as well as the statement that the staff contacted both the State Department and the OMB Monday, September 28th, telling them that this hearing would be held and what the subject matter would be.
The reason that there was short notice is because we just got notice of the proposed reprogramming funds to make additional payments for the Russians and we felt that it was important that we have a hearing on this subject before the Congress adjourned to go back home for the elections.
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[The letters referred to follow:]
"The Official Committee record contains additional material here."
Chairman SENSENBRENNER. The gentlewoman from Maryland, Mrs. Morella.
Mrs. MORELLA. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I'd like to yield 30 seconds to Mr. Chabrow for any comment he may want to make.
Mr. CHABROW. Thank you. One of the things that was said here was that no matter how much we send to them, and I think Mr. Gutknecht brought that up, there is no way that any amount of money at all that we can send them to make sure this is right.
I have personally been over there three times and I can assure you that when they have the dollars, if you remember what I said at the opening, they have performed within the cost and just as good, if not better, than many of the firms that we have here.
Such as, if you can compare this and what they've done for us to the F–22, the advanced tactical fighter and Polaris, and other jobs, they have performed better than many of our own subcontractors right here in the United States. Thank you. I also wanted to say——
Mrs. MORELLA. Your time has expired.
Mr. CHABROW [continuing]. That I am 55, but I'm still active.
Chairman SENSENBRENNER. The gentlewoman from Maryland.
Mrs. MORELLA. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I wanted to pick up on the $60 million funding transfer, and I see we've got Joe Rothenberg behind you, Mr. Goldin, who has been involved with that protocol, the NASA RSA protocol signed on September 30.
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I am interested in the fact that the protocol includes attachment A, which is entitled Payment Milestones, and that appears to attach the payment of the $60 million to specific dates and actions.
So my questions are 37 percent of—I'm sorry, 57 percent of the $60 million is tied to the date, October 10. That's not many more days from today, I think three more days from today. Have some of the milestones that were required for October 10 already occurred and what happens if the Russians don't meet those milestones?
Mr. GOLDIN. Mr. Chairman, could Mr. Rothenberg get sworn in so he could answer her question.
Chairman SENSENBRENNER. Yes. Mr. Rothenberg, could you please raise your right hand.
Do you solemnly swear that the testimony you are about to give to this Committee will be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God.
Mr. ROTHENBERG. I do.
Chairman SENSENBRENNER. Will Mr. Rothenberg please answer Mrs. Morella's question.
Mr. ROTHENBERG. Okay. The answer to your question is that in order to get the Service Module test program completed, there is some critical hardware that needs to be gotten on order as soon as possible. It's about 2 to 4 months delivery time and we are on a very short fuse.
They have not ordered this equipment at this point in time. They do need to have money in order to do it. They are strictly on hold because of not being able to get money to the subcontractors. And that's the reason for the early milestones.
Mrs. MORELLA. So what recourse do we have? I mean, what happens if, as you say, if the Russians don't meet the milestones even at the end of the payment period when most of the funding has already been sent?
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Mr. ROTHENBERG. Those specific milestones have been identified and the cost to the subcontractors required in order to complete them have been identified. The only thing we can do at this point is to, number one, for the first increment of money, get it in place and then watch that it goes directly to those subcontractors.
We have been promised access to the subcontractors. There is another list of milestones behind it that gives us access to all of the activities along the way. If they don't complete those milestones, all we can do in the future is hold off any payments in the future.
But we need to trust them for that first set of steps.
Mrs. MORELLA. Do you feel comfortable with the fact that you really don't have enforcement mechanisms in place?
Mr. ROTHENBERG. Well, the only thing I can say to that is that we have in the past, when they have committed to make deliveries and they have had the cash, have done that. We have audited the money we have spent in there and they have produced what they said. And we can only go by that mechanism. That's our money with our contract with them and watching deliveries very closely. I don't have any other mechanism to enforce it.
Mrs. MORELLA. Are those mechanisms that you mentioned, are they in the protocol? Are they mentioned in the protocol?
Mr. ROTHENBERG. The mechanisms of?
Mrs. MORELLA. Enforcement, as elusive as they are.
Mr. ROTHENBERG. I didn't mention any enforcement. I said our mechanism is to monitor the activities that they produce after we gave them the money. All we can do at that point is if they don't deliver, we don't buy any additional goods and services, no additional dollars at that point.
Mrs. MORELLA. But I mean none of that is even written into the protocol. That's just simply a gentleperson's agreement.
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Mr. ROTHENBERG. Well, it's an agreement in exchange for goods and services, and the milestones that you referred to are in the protocol. Our ability to stop future work is unilateral. I mean, we can take that without a protocol.
Mrs. MORELLA. The protocol states that other items will require funding, other items going beyond the stowage, the various elements, and will be negotiated by November of 1998. And it states that funding for those items will come from contract reserves from the $472 million Shuttle-Mir contract.
So what level of reserves are left in that $472 million contract?
Mr. ROTHENBERG. There's a few million, less than $10 million. But I don't know the exact number.
Mrs. MORELLA. Less than $10 million, so not very much.
Chairman SENSENBRENNER. The gentlewoman's time has expired.
Mrs. MORELLA. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman SENSENBRENNER. The gentlewoman from Texas, Ms. Jackson Lee.
Ms. JACKSON LEE. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Whenever there is an opportunity to look more closely at NASA and its operations, I think it is appropriate, though I want to associate myself with my colleague's remarks from Texas on two accounts.
One, I think it is well-known that Mr. Talbott is acting in a capacity as Acting Secretary of State. We should make that very clear. And I imagine that most of America recognizes that Congress seems to be spending a lot of time on extraneous issues and that Cabinet members and Presidents and Congresspeople have a lot more things to do than some of the extraneous.
And then other times, they cannot get to other important meetings because of their other responsibilities. I think it is important, as well, to note that Mr. Lew, who I have worked with and find a very credible and responsible individual, because of the delay of the appropriations bill, is being called by the leadership of this House to some very important meetings. And I think we should at least establish that there is so much work going on and so little time.
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But I do want to try to focus on where we are today, and would offer to say to Mr. Oberg with very detailed analysis that might catch little of us trying to understand it, I think the budget of NASA is well open to us. We understand the budget line items that could be asked and I am not sure whether the sort of transfer analysis that you are making brings any reason or understanding to the discussion. But you certainly have a right to your opinion.
What I would say, Dan, is two points that I would like to emphasize. This Committee has a range of opinions on NASA from healthy skepticism to strong supporters. I am a supporter. And frankly, I think the most important thing for those of us who are supporters is to have all the information all of the time.
So the first thing that I'd personally request of you is an item that deals with Russia. It is appropriate to meet with or call with members, or have a call in to members outside of staff. I think that the first mistake was for this $660 million and now $60 million to come to the attention of members by way of news articles. I think it was an important enough issue to have our attention on it.
Putting that aside, let me having not gone to Russia, but having studied this issue, fully agree with you that the Russians take great pride in their participation not only in this Space Station, but in space. They were first into space; they are looked to for their leadership.
And for us to even fool around on that issue is without any common sense. I think that they are by themselves, separate from their terrible financial conditions, very much committed.
My question to you on this point, and I think Mr. Chabrow as well, do they now have the technology to do what we need them to do? Dan?
Mr. GOLDIN. We are not asking them to do any advanced technology. We are asking them to complete the delivery of a piece of hardware.
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I also want to be clear, when we had quoted in our materials that it is 98 percent completed, it relates to its assembly. If you take a look at the materials that NASA has provided to this Committee, and in fact, if you take a look at my opening statement in my testimony, we have fully documented the exact status, exactly how many tests have been run on the service module, how many did they pass, how many did they fail, where does each piece of hardware reside.
The reason I—the only thing that gets me frustrated is when information is presented that NASA is trying to hide something.
Ms. JACKSON LEE. I absolutely agree with you on that.
Mr. GOLDIN. We have been very, very open with this data, and I invite everyone to look at that opening statement.
I also would like to say——
Ms. JACKSON LEE. My time is short. I just want to ask—have the question answered, they have the ability to do what we need them to do at this point, whether it's delivering, whether it's finishing, do they have the ability?
Mr. GOLDIN. The very narrow tasks we have defined for them, we believe they have a capacity for doing it if we provide the appropriate funding and detailed milestones and appropriate oversight to verify we're going to get what we have asked for.
Ms. JACKSON LEE. Can I ask just the same question, Mr. Chabrow. Can you tell me would it be more—just one answer yes or no, would it be more costly to throw the Russians aside at this point and try to do it ourselves or less costly?
Mr. CHABROW. It would be a big mistake to throw them aside. They are there. All they need is cash flow.
Ms. JACKSON LEE. Let me say to you that what I would look for from NASA is, as my colleagues have already said, give us a detailed response on how Russia will proceed in the months and years to come so that we can analyze. Because, frankly, though you have not asked for $150 million, you are talking about $60 at this point, you are talking about a bailout. We have to make that decision as to whether or not that is an appropriate position for us to take. Reasonably if we understand it, it may be. But, frankly, I think you have to know when you give money to Russia, one question is whether it will be paid back, and whether or not when they run out of that money that we have given, whether or not we will have a situation where they are again asking. That is very important.
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My last question, Dr. Twigg, do you have a solution to this? You have given us problems, but what is your solution?
Ms. TWIGG. That is a complicated question. I understand that there are considerable foreign policy implications involved in just pulling the rug out from under the Russians and taking them away from the program. But surely there are solutions that exist between cutting Russia out all together and putting them in the critical path of the program that can be crafted by the people involved.
Ms. JACKSON LEE. Well we don't have that right now. I would simply ask that Dr. Chabrow and Dan be in touch with us with a specific structured analysis on the Russian participation.
Mr. CHABROW. I would be pleased to work that.
Ms. JACKSON LEE. Thank you very much.
Chairman SENSENBRENNER. The Chair will declare a recess.
Ms. JACKSON LEE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman SENSENBRENNER. And ask members to come back promptly after this vote. There will probably be a vote on passage of a conference report following this. This is a 15-minute vote, and a five minute vote on a conference report. So please come back promptly after the conclusion of the 5 minute vote.
The Committee stands in recess.
[Brief recess.]
Chairman SENSENBRENNER. The Committee will be in order.
Mr. Brady is next up. The gentleman from Texas.
Mr. BRADY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I first want to reiterate that we are all on the same side here with perhaps the exception of Mr. Roemer. We want to see the Space Station succeed and the potentials be reached from space exploration and research. Secondly, I think we all want to see Russia succeed as a non-communist nation, recognizingthat compared to the problems and the choices that they have to make themselves, that this issue is almost insignificant financially to their long-term success.
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I am going to change the question I was going to ask earlier because of the statement made in response to a question to Mr. Goldin regarding cancelling the Space Station. Are you really willing to risk all the American jobs that relate to this project, all the scientists who have changed their career paths in order to dedicate themselves to the Space Station, all the companies that have obligations and commitments and our international partners. Are you really truly willing to stake all that on the likelihood or to protect Russian pride in compliance as a partner? It seems to me that this Station is a lot more important than any one country or their pride, that we have tremendous potential from it, that the priority here is a Space Station first in the research stemming, and economic and scientific benefits from that.
If that is truly your priority, then perhaps you ought to consider resignation. I would hate to see that happen, but I think Russian pride first and the Space Station and the benefits second is a poor priority. I want to give you an opportunity to clarify our remarks.
Mr. GOLDIN. I really appreciate that because that isn't what I was saying. Along with all the others, I have a lot of my life in this Space Station. No, the priority is not the Russian pride. The priority is not keeping Russia in the program. The priority is doing what we say we are going to do. That is to get it built.
What I was saying was there is a lot of discussion that goes on about what NASA ought to do and how we ought to keep the Russians off the critical path. I said our people work long and hard to do the right thing. We are trying to smartly keep the Russians off the critical path because of the resources we're given to do the job.
What I was saying is we are going to need more resources. We can not generate money to pay for a half billion dollar propulsion module. We can not generate money to do the smart thing now to buy specific goods and services to keep the Space Station up in the air while we're building that propulsion module.
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I was expressing frustration that as we go through this program and identify resources that we need to do the right and smart thing, given the pressures that we have on budget that are not available, no. I don't want the Space Station cancelled, but as we approach the Fiscal Year 2000 budget process, given the schedule we have to keep, given the launches we have to undertake, given the fact that Mr. Chabrow and his team have done a wonderful job in identifying the problems, they have identified the monies that we need. In some way, shape or form we are going to have to face up to finding those monies. That is what I was saying.
Under no conditions, none whatsoever, was I apologizing, if you got that impression, that I was fighting to say that the purpose that we're doing this is to keep the Russians in the program.
Mr. BRADY. One, I appreciate the clarification. But two, the actions seem to support that priority.
I have only been on this Committee for 18 months, 20 months now, but in each case we have had a partner who we in good faith have tried to keep involved, providing, bending over backwards to help them meet their commitments, both in dollars and time. We have already jeopardized with some supporters the timeline on the Space Station, added cost to the taxpayer. We have already paid a pretty heavy price for this partnership at this point. You are still now hopeful that they will commit additional dollars so that the rifle shot approach strategy that you're promoting will work, but would depend upon them to come up with that. It would be difficult to argue that that's likely.
So the reason I think that at some point our actions need to reinforce our priorities of the Space Station and its research and its benefits and to keep the—while we remove Russia off the critical path, keep the door open for the time when they are capable of and when things have strengthened for them so that they can become again contributing partners to this project.
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Chairman SENSENBRENNER. The gentleman's time has expired.
Mr. BRADY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman SENSENBRENNER. The gentleman from Minnesota, Mr. Luther is recognized with the same admonition I gave Mr. Gutknecht about Monday night's football game.
Mr. LUTHER. I'm glad you saw so much of that game, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman SENSENBRENNER. I fell asleep after the first quarter, I'll be the first to admit.
Mr. LUTHER. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
Nice to see you, Mr. Goldin. Thanks for the good work that you are doing. I appreciate it very much.
Thanks for all of your presentations. What I would like to ask you, Mr. Goldin, to really focus on the key issue we are talking about today, is what other options were considered and why were they rejected? My question then to the others would be what other options should seriously be considered other than the plan that's before us here?
Mr. GOLDIN. One option was to sever the near-term relationship with the Russian Space Agency immediately. We looked at that and said we didn't think, and if we did, we would then have to wait for a number of years to have human permanent presence on that Station. It would have been in the opposite direction that we would have wanted to operate the Station.
So we said what specific areas do we need Russian goods and services, while at the same time not precluding the fact that they could come back later and be a more aggressive partner? What goods and services do we need that will allow us to keep the launch schedule to roughly where we would like it to be, and to allow us to get the Station built? So we then came up with this plan that we had where we would rifle the purchase of specific goods and services and in the limit not count on the Russians getting additional resources, because if we have to depend on that, that's something that we can not control. It is in coming to grips with that that we tried to figure out, how much should that number be. The number we have is $150 million. I don't know whether that will be enough.
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But what we also did is we have a team of 50 people in Russia to validate that the Russians have the technical capacity to do those specific tasks we asked. Those are the two extremes. We think we have selected the right one. We are trying to do the smart thing, smartly keep the Russians off the critical path while allowing them to come back into the program when they can be a full partner.
Chairman SENSENBRENNER. Do the other members of the panel wish to respond to Mr. Luther's question? Mr. Chabrow?
Mr. CHABROW. Yes. I took a look at that. We took a look at the fact that right now you do need Progress, as we don't have that propulsion right now. So there are only so many options that you do have. You need vehicles for logistics, you need vehicles for boosts. People ask, gee, why couldn't you do that in the shuttle. The reason why is because you have an up mass that shuttle could not do. It can't lift Service, the SM, it can't lift other items. So right now one has to take a look at what we need in the near-term.
In the near-term, I don't think that they have a lot of options in the near-term. They have to stick with what they have now. However, remember, people, if you just cut yourself off now, and I made up a little list here now. We would need three years more for a prop module. No Soyuz. The early flights would have no crew. A shuttle-based build, which would take many more flights. Another ICM. Well, another ICM would be $200 million more, and would be a big, big science hit because you couldn't perform what Dan is planing to perform now by making that trade that he is.
So when you take a look at all those items, it really does pay us now to keep the options that we have now, do what we can now, and then wean ourselves, if you will, downstream.
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Chairman SENSENBRENNER. Mr. Chabrow, if the gentleman from Minnesota can yield. The items that you have just mentioned, would you fairly state that those are Russian items that are in the critical path?
Mr. CHABROW. I would say yes. The early ones aren't now for the time being now. That's the aspirin that I used for the headache. We want to make sure that we don't go down that sum, and keep them in the path, but we actually get ourselves on our own path.
Chairman SENSENBRENNER. Professor Twigg or Mr. Oberg.
Ms. TWIGG. Mr. Luther, I'll answer your question in more general terms. There is a significant amount of technology and hardware that is on the shelf in Russia right now that works and that we could profitably buy. That is why the FGB procurement was successful, because so much of that hardware was based so much on proven subsystems that the Russians had used for their Mir program.
But anything that you ask Russia to do right now that draws on new technology, that draws on new instrumentation, that would draw on new research and development, is likely to be just beyond their infrastructural capacity at this point. Therefore, I would argue that they will just be coming back for money time and time again down the road. In the end, it will end up costing us more than if we had done some of those sorts of things ourselves from the beginning.
Mr. CHABROW. We are not asking for anything new. I don't think anybody has asked for anything new. I think everything that is there now is probably compromising the same as the Mir and other things that they have built.
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Chairman SENSENBRENNER. Can I get Mr. Oberg's two cents worth in before Mr. Luther's time expires?
Mr. OBERG. Thank you. I would like to see a realistic appraisal of the run-out program costs without the Russians. I think we have kept hearing billions of dollars thrown around, of costs and delays. I think the delay statements are accurate. That we'd have to wait and not launch for some time. That would be a big psychological hit.
Let's keep in mind I think though that we want to—we are moving toward a date when we have, if not assembly complete, then at least have U.S. lab up and operational. If launching things now as soon as possible promises to bring us to the U.S. lab operational time sooner, then even if we have to pay extra money for it, that may well be the best option.
I suspect, however, that we are still building our future plans on future hopes, hopes that have been dashed again and again, and have proven to be illusions. We're not trying to insult anyone's integrity, we are just trying to insult their competence in terms of assessing Russian futures.
Mr. CHABROW. Many of those items have been built, sir. They just won't be delivered until they are paid. So there are some 20 subcontractors that have the hardware, they are already done. There is no scientific push, but they just can't deliver it because they haven't been paid.
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Chairman SENSENBRENNER. The gentleman's time has expired.
The gentleman from Michigan, Mr. Ehlers.
Mr. EHLERS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I apologize to the panel that I did not hear their testimony because I was in another Committee meeting at that time. But I read the testimony while waiting my turn here. I just wanted to pick up on one thing. Most of my other questions have been answered or asked by others.
Professor Twigg, you make a fairly strong case in your testimony that it's not a matter of money. Even if we provided the money, the project still could not go forward.
Whereas Mr. Chabrow, in your comments, I don't think it's in your testimony directly, but in response to an earlier question, you said all they need is cash flow, by which I assume you mean all they need is money.
Mr. CHABROW. Correct.
Mr. EHLERS. These are in direct contradiction. You touched on that just briefly in your last response, but I would like to pin that down a bit more. Professor Twigg, would you state your position succinctly on this? Do you disagree with Mr. Chabrow when he says all they need is more money?
Ms. TWIGG. I don't have access to all of the detailed information about exactly what Russian contractors have in hand on the shelf and what they don't. So my comments are generically in regard to the health of the Russian aerospace industry in general. But given that we have already been given figures like the Service Module is 98 percent complete and difficulties in interpreting exactly what that figure means, I would just say that it is very important then to see exact data about precisely what it is that those subcontractors have on hand that is only awaiting money before they release it from their warehouses to the prime contractor.
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Mr. EHLERS. Mr. Chabrow.
Mr. CHABROW. There is a list of items in the Service Module and the Complex Test Stand where they have completed maybe 70 percent of the testing that's ready to go to INT right now. But in order—it would be like Boeing, it would be like them saying we need cash flow or else we are going to pull everybody off the job. If you were to get them paid and they were to stay, in fact many of them are right now working and they are not being paid, many of them are working and they aren't being paid. So I have a list here which I am not going to go through now, but many items that are done are delivered ready to go. So it's not like it's 89 percent complete and it's some ethereal that it won't ever occur. I think that's the point that you were trying to make. That is not true. This will be done. There is a date. There is a time that this will be done. Hardware is there. All they need is the cash flow to get it.
Mr. EHLERS. Would you please submit the rest for the record so that we have that on record?
Mr. CHABROW. Yes.
Chairman SENSENBRENNER. Without objection, the list will be placed in the record.
Mr. EHLERS. Professor Twigg, you state that the infrastructure of the Nation is in such sorry condition, as well as the infrastructure of the space activities there that you really don't see much hope that they could really meet their obligations here. Am I misstating your position or is that accurate?
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Ms. TWIGG. That is accurate, sir.
Mr. EHLERS. All right. Thank you very much.
Mr. Chairman, earlier you asked Congresswoman Johnson to yield time and she was not able to. I would like to yield you my remaining time to answer the point you raised.
Chairman SENSENBRENNER. I'll yield it back so that Mr. Lampson, who has been very patient, can get his two cents worth in before we adjourn this meeting.
The gentleman from Texas.
Mr. LAMPSON. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I have been complaining that I was dead last in this Congress, but I'm moving up slowly but surely.
First, I want to welcome Mr. Oberg, my constituent. Glad to see you here.
I have a detailed question to ask of Mr. Goldin, but before I do, let me turn to Mr. Rothenberg. I was a little bit troubled by your response that you made to Mrs. Morella a few minutes ago that seemed to suggest that NASA couldn't enforce the protocol with Russia. Is that what you meant or not? Could you explain, but don't take too much time.
Mr. ROTHENBERG. Okay. Let's see, the point that I was trying to make is that the protocol does call out the goods and services. It does call out the milestones. It provides a process by which we can renegotiate should they fail to be able to deliver anything.
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The upfront payment of the money is the one issue that makes it a little more difficult to enforce. But there is a process to find in the protocol for renegotiating the goods and services, including the balance of the Russian contributions to the program and how that returns to the United States. The contract is the mechanism that provides the enforcement tool. The protocol defines the process.
Mr. LAMPSON. And we can accomplish that? Good.
You know, I am a strong supporter of the Space Station. Like Dr. Weldon earlier made his comments. I was very proud to join him and others when we won the best vote that we've had for our Space Station when it came up for funding this Space Station, when it came up not long ago. I was proud to stand up there and say, as NASA put out some time ago, that for every dollar we spend in space, we get a $9 return here on Earth. I still firmly believe that. It does get a little frustrating when we have to consider over and over the amount of money that we are having to put into these situations, and I am very pleased to hear Mr. Chabrow, Dr. Chabrow, say at this time that we shouldn't be considering severing our relationship with Russia. But if that point ever comes, we hope that we will hear it quickly and at the appropriate time.
But I think, Mr. Goldin, what I would like to hear right now, I guess it's easy for us to consider the big dollars that we're talking about, the big dollar amount and see that we're going to be giving away or appropriating money to Russia for its efforts. What are the details of this? What can I tell my taxpayers at home, my constituents at home that these dollars are being well spent? What are we going to get above and beyond what we have been expecting to get when we began to spend these additional dollars above the $60 million. Are we going to get more now back for the additional dollars that we will spend?
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Mr. GOLDIN. It is our intention, in my statement as we expend money in Russia, we will get specific goods and services for what it is that we spend. It is not our intention to have a foreign aid program. It is not our intention, and the term keeps coming up, give. We are not, have not, nor will we give money to Russia.
In the last years, we have bought specific goods and services. We will continue to buy specific goods and services. That is in the best interests of the program.
Mr. LAMPSON. Some of the details, can you——
Mr. GOLDIN. The one detail I can give you, because we have negotiated it on the $60 million that they need to finish what they were supposed to do, they are relinquishing their astronaut time during the assembly buildup so that we could dedicate it to our research. In effect, we will double the number of hours that astronauts will be available, for Americans to do research on that program.
The second thing we are going to get that we needed and did not have is storage volume inside the Russian elements. That storage volume will allow us to stage the research facilities as they come up so that we could be much more efficient in the performance of the research that we intend to do. That's a very specific payback and something that's going to be incredibly helpful to us. That is the price they had to pay in return for the $60 million that we are providing them to do what we need to have done.
Mr. LAMPSON. The extra $60 million is predicated on an aggressive launch schedule. Do you plan to fly any non-Station Shuttle science missions in the next year? I noted in the VA–HUD appropriation bill passed yesterday included a $15 million extra in research funds, and language directing you to fly research missions in 1999. Those of us in Congress who welcome extra scientific missions welcome this increment of funding and look forward to this much-needed research mission. I know this is early in the process, but can you give us some kind of an idea of how you will accommodate this flight?
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Mr. GOLDIN. We are anticipating adding two additional logistic flights to make the program more robust in 1999. We are going to explore the possibility of doing some of the research on those logistics flights. They are also planning an additional, we have an additional flight on the book, 107, and we're looking at an additional flight there just for research, plus two more. We're going to factor that into our thinking. I believe in about a month or two, we'll get back to you on it. We thank the Congress for providing the support for this additional research.
Chairman SENSENBRENNER. The gentleman's time has expired.
Mr. LAMPSON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman SENSENBRENNER. Before adjourning the hearing, let me ask unanimous consent to put into the record first, the September 30th NASA–RSA protocol, and second, the September 29th NASA reprogramming letter regarding the first $60 million downpayment. Without objection, those items will be put in the record.
[The information referred to follows:]
offset folios 1575 to 1586 insert here
Chairman SENSENBRENNER. I would like to thank the witnesses for their very erudite testimony, and the members of the Committee for their vigorous participation.
Mr. Goldin, I hope we don't have to see you back here on this subject, but we reserve the right to come and ask you a few more questions.
The meeting is adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 12:52 p.m., the hearing was adjourned.]
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[The following material was received for the record:]
ANSWERS TO QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY THE CHAIRMAN, COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE, FOR THE OCTOBER 7, 1998 HEARING ''THE ADMINISTRATION'S PROPOSED BAIL-OUT FOR RUSSIA''
Question one: NASA proposed bringing the Russians into the International Space Station program as a means of reducing the program's overall cost. Setting aside the attractiveness to the Administration from a foreign policy standpoint, this proposal made specific claims to cost savings, and therefore tied the Russians to a set of expectations.
Were these expectations too high based on Russia's economic condition?
Should we have been able to see that our expectations were too high before either bringing them into the program altogether or setting the bar at a certain level before gaining more insight into the condition of their industry?
Answer to question one: The conclusions I presented in my verbal testimony are not new. Several analysts understood the condition of the Russian aerospace industry in the early 1990's and were making predictions then concerning the likely future capacity of that industry. In other words, there was ample evidence at the time that the International Space Station agreement was being forged that Russia may not be able to live up to its promises.
I cite here several example of prominent work published in 1992 offering pessimistic assessments of the future industrial capacity of the Russian aerospace sector.
''The former Soviet defense industrial establishment [understood to include space/aerospace], to the extent that it can still be considered a viable and coherent institution, has virtually no hope of institutional survival. Its efforts at self-preservation have actually hastened its disintegration. * * * [These] self-preservation strategies * * * have resulted in the atomization and general technological regression of the defense industrial base.''
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—Stephen M. Meyer, ''The Military,'' in Timothy J. Colton and Robert Legvold, eds., After the Soviet Union (New York: W. W. Norton & Company), 1992, pp 113–146.
''Defense industrial enterprises have adopted a variety of coping strategies, all of them self-destructive in the long term, including cannibalization of existing stockpiles in order to maintain production lines; massive inter-enterprise indebtedness in order to maintain wage payments to increasingly disgruntled workers; and a siphoning off of their best equipment and personnel to offer to Western investors. * * * [The Russian space] industry has now deteriorated to the point that it will never be able to deliver what the Russian Military Space Units will want from it, primarily because of the decimation of the research and development base. * * * It is reasonable to argue that even if the space research and development sector were to experience a massive infusion of state or foreign resources, its infrastructure has been damaged to the point that it could not bounce back quickly; it will take years to rebuild the capability and potential that existed in that sector six or seven years ago.''
—Judyth L. Twigg, ''Russia,'' in Robert L. Butterworth, ed., Guide to Space Issues for the 1990s, published by the Center for National Security Studies at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, December 1992, pp. 41–61, reprinted in part as ''The Russian Space Programme: What Lies Ahead?'' Space Policy, Vol. 10, No. 1, 1994, pp. 19–31.
Question two: Mr. Oberg's testimony pointed out that proceeding with the November/December launch of the FGB and Node 1 without greater certainty about the arrival of the Service Module and other critical path hardware increases our programmatic risk.
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Does launching those elements without a date certain for completion and launch of the Service Module increase programmatic risk?
Does it also increase our financial risk, in that once hardware is in space we would be even more vulnerable to Russian funding defaults, or even blackmail?
Answer to question two: I completely concur with Mr. Oberg's assessment. There is reason to question the validity of promises that the Service Module is ''95% complete''—or at minimum, to question the definition of ''95%'' and the definition of ''complete.'' Mr. Chabrow said during the Hearing that there is a list of Service Module components that are finished and being withheld from the prime contractor only because the funds to pay for them are not forthcoming. To decrease programmatic risk, before launching the FGB and Node 1, it would be prudent to insist not only on the existence of such a list, but on real independent verification of the location and condition of the items on that list.
Of course the financial and programmatic risks increase once the initial Station elements have been launched. For that reason, NASA should continue vigorous pursuit of options to replace, on either a temporary or permanent basis, the Service Module and other Russian components with U.S.-funded and built hardware. The presence of credible alternatives to Russian contributions dramatically reduces NASA's vulnerability to Russian industrial and political uncertainties. Those alternatives obviously constitute the basis of a strategy to remove Russia from the critical path.
LIST OF CHANGES TO THE HEARING TRANSCRIPT—JUDYTH L. TWIGG
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It's all transcription errors, some of which are for purposes of grammatical accuracy, and some of which clarify the proper meaning of the testimony.
Line 486: insert comma after ''intact''.
Line 526: remove commas on either side of ''primarily''.
Line 527: remove comma after ''inertia''.
Line 528: change ''there's'' to ''there is''.
Line 540: change ''countries'' to ''countries' '' (make it plural possessive).
Line 554: remove comma after ''restored''.
Line 555: remove comma after ''political''.
Line 556: insert comma after ''operate''.
Line 961: insert comma after ''develop''.
Line 962: insert comma after ''therefore''.
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[As of Friday, December 18, 1998, The State Department failed to respond to the written questions submitted by Chairman Sensenbrenner on October 13, 1998.]