SPACE SCIENCE AND APPLICATIONS IN THE 197CTS 33I 



It reminds mc of the story of a little boy who is asked, to test his intelligence, 

 what he would do if he saw a train coming down the track from the north at 70 miles 

 an hour and about three or tour miles away he could barely see, but certainly hear, a 

 train coming from the south at about 50 miles an hour. The professor asked the boy, 

 "What would you do?" and the boy responded: "I would call to my brother." 



" Why would you do that?" the professor wanted to know. 



" Because he has never seen a train wreck like that before." 



In 1974, the Symington subcommittee continued to stress support 

 of Applications, as well as continued funding of space science projects. 

 The subcommittee was enthusiastic about the results achieved and 

 data obtained from communications and weather satellites, the Earth 

 resources surveys, and programs for monitoring pollution. In addition, 

 the subcommittee under Symington helped fund the highly successful 

 Applications Technology Satellite-6 which communicated education 

 and health services information to millions of people, via television, 

 in India and remote areas of the United States such as Alaska. During 

 its 1974 markup, the Symington subcommittee adopted an amendment 

 by Congressman Winn authorizing NASA to set aside $2 million for 

 research on tornadoes and other short-term weather phenomena. 



Reflecting in 1978 on his experiences with the committee, 

 Symington related that one of the most crucial decisions he had to make 

 concerned the Viking program — by far the most expensive and most 

 complex unmanned project authorized by the committee for a 1975 

 flight to Mars. Two spacecraft, each containing an orbiter and a soft 

 lander, also included a biomedical package designed to perform a num- 

 ber of tests with Martian soil to ascertain the possibility of life on 

 Mars. The total program exceeded $1 billion in cost, and Symington's 

 subcommittee soon discovered that the costs were escalating far 

 beyond the preliminary cost estimate of $346 million. After personal 

 visits to the contractors and NASA's field installations, Symington's 

 subcommittee decided that in view of the heavy cost overruns, over- 

 sight hearings should be held on November 21 and 22, 1974 "to 

 determine the nature of these development problems, and why they 

 were unexpected at such a late stage in the Viking project. ' ' Symington 

 announced at the opening of the oversight hearings: 



We shall also review the financial history of the project, and seek an expert 

 assessment of the probability of mission success. 



Symington vividly recalls the nature of the big decision he and his 

 subcommittee had to make. Everything was in readiness to meet the 

 Mars "window" for launch in the summer of 1975, except the bio- 

 medical package— a highly complex and super-miniaturized set of 

 delicate instruments which had been packed into a box one cubic 



