216 HISTORY OF THE COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY 



A total of over a quarter of a million photographs have been sent back to Earth. 

 Tiros has done a good, sturdy job in the past 3 years in identifying many hurricanes 

 and typhoons and relaying advance warnings. Improvements in weather predictions 

 in the future carry vast implications for farmers and businessmen. These improvements 

 will be of prime importance in underdeveloped areas of the world. 



When the Karth subcommittee was assigned jurisdiction over 

 weather satellites at the beginning of 1964, strong support was given 

 to the program. However, the subcommittee was disturbed to learn 

 that a radical decision had been made by the Weather Bureau. NASA 

 had developed and launched Tiros, a relatively simple spin-stabilized 

 craft. At the same time, NASA was developing for Weather Bureau 

 operational use a more complex three-axis stabilized satellite called 

 Nimbus to incorporate more instrumentation, for weather prediction. 



In September 1963, however, the Weather Bureau decided that 

 Nimbus was too expensive and "too rich for its blood." So the Weather 

 Bureau rather belatedly notified NASA that because of cost factors 

 Nimbus could not be used in any operational system. To the subcom- 

 mittee, this seemed to be an unfortunate and inefficient turn of events. 

 But NASA was not to blame, and NASA continued to develop and 

 launch more Nimbus craft to test new instrumentation, even though 

 the Weather Bureau couldn't pay for Nimbus. 



In 1965, Karth reported to the House that Tiros had run up a 

 record string of nine straight successes, adding: 



The data received from these experiments have opened up new horizons of 

 research into the Earth's atmosphere. Pictures of cloud cover received from Tiros 

 satellites are valuable, but new advanced sensors to measure temperature, wind 

 velocity, and moisture content at various altitudes are now under development. 



Several members in 1966 raised questions as to possible duplication 

 among the many weather services in several different Federal agencies. 

 However, Representatives Weston Vivian (Democrat of Michigan), 

 Barber B. Conable Jr. (Republican of New York), and Karth all con- 

 cluded that from a cost effectiveness standpoint, weather satellites 

 were a sound investment. 



In 1967, the Karth subcommittee voted to defer a $5 million item 

 for two additional Nimbus satellites, but the Senate and the conference 

 committee overruled their efforts. General Electric obtained the cost- 

 plus-hxed-fee contracts, and when the new weather satellites were 

 launched, they still proved too expensive for the Weather Bureau to 

 opt to utilize them. 



Karth told the House in 1968: 



NASA's meteorological satellite projects have been the most successful of all 

 NASA programs. The United States has launched 18 meteorological satellites without 

 a single failure * * *. The Environmental Science Services Administration — ESSA — is 

 now using satellites and sensors developed by NASA for weather prediction on a 

 daily basis. 



