44 HISTORY OF THE COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY 



It is a tribute to Chairman Brooks that he barged ahead and re- 

 fused to be embarrassed in the face of a storm of criticism from many 

 different committee chairmen. Among the most upset was Representa- 

 tive Oren Harris (Democrat of Arkansas), chairman of the Committee 

 on Interstate and Foreign Commerce, who raised the issue on the House 

 floor. Harris objected to hearings by the Brooks committee on communi- 

 cations satellites and their operation. Brooks merely fended off the 

 challenge by insisting that his committee was only inquiring into 

 R. & D., and was not interested in operation. 



In some other areas in the first few years, the Science and Astro- 

 nautics Committee held hearings which seemed to stretch its juris- 

 diction pretty far. The committee was barely a month old when 

 Brooks asked Ducandcr to start some new hearings on space food by 

 calling the Department of Agriculture over to testify. The hearings 

 were a disaster in their lack of planning, and almost total lack of any 

 useful information elicited. The Agricultural Research Service gave an 

 extended dissertation on their administrative operations, but had little 

 to offer about space food. The hearing would have completely col- 

 lapsed had it not been for Congressman Fulton's determination "to 

 spur you on to new ideas and new approaches. * * * We are trying to 

 get you to raise your sights." After getting nothing but wooden 

 responses to his questions, Fulton finally erupted with a question 

 which literally stunned the witness and was long and fondly remem- 

 bered as the greatest Fultonism of all time: 



Possibly in space the approach to vegetables might be different. Did that ever 

 strike you — because we are thinking of three-dimensional vegetables, maybe in 

 space, where you have a lot of sunlight, you might get a two-dimensional tomato. 

 It might be 1 million miles long and as thin as a sheet of paper, aimed toward the 

 sun — a tomato. 



There was a long silence, as the Department of Agriculture witness 

 blinked, and finally blurted out softly: "It is an interesting thought." 

 He was completely flabbergasted. 



In addition to his jurisdictional fights with other committees, 

 Chairman Brooks had one serious jurisdictional fight which arose 

 within his own committee. Brooks was eager to expand his jurisdiction 

 to cover oceanography, and he fashioned a bill for the development 

 of teaching facilities and aiding graduate students which he managed 

 to get referred to the Committee on Science and Astronautics. But 

 Brooks received an angry reaction from the ranking member of his 

 committee, George P. Miller of California, who also served as chair- 

 man of the Oceanography Subcommittee of the Merchant Marine and 

 Fisheries Committee. Miller insisted that jurisdiction over ocean- 

 ography really belonged to the Merchant Marine Committee. Brooks' 



