SPACE SCIENCE, APPLICATIONS, AND ADVANCED RESEARCH, 1963-6') 937 



Dr. Newell. We are moving toward incentive contracts. In fact, the Office of 

 Space Science and Applications has the largest number of such contracts in the agency, 

 as just a means for trying to avoid this son oJ problem, for getting the attention 

 of the contractor to these things, since it affects him in the pocketbook. 



Mr. Mosher. The mistake on Hughes' part is something you necessarily write 

 off as experience from which we can benefit next time; is that right? 



Dr. Newell. Yes. 



Mr. Karth. Now, I assume that some of the JPL management team was also 

 working on the problems of the drop test, or was this an exclusive thing on the part 

 of Hughes? I am trying to pinpoint some responsibility. 



Dr. Newell. Well, it is a responsibility we all have to share, because if we had 

 penetrated properly into the testing program, we should have spotted this too. 



The Karth subcommittee concluded that the first deficiency was 

 NASA's failure to require sufficient preliminary design work before 

 hardware development. Second, NASA should have stepped in and 

 exerted firmer control over JPL sooner than it did. Third, JPL was 

 concentrating so heavily on Ranger and Mariner that it neglected to 

 supervise Hughes until late in the game. Of course, needless to say, 

 Hughes top management was equally to blame. 



The Surveyor investigative report ended on an optimistic note, en- 

 couraging NASA to "continue their present high level of attention to 

 the Surveyor project." 



A pleasant aftermath of the Karth hearings was the fact that from 

 1966 through 1968, five of the seven Surveyor shots landed successfully 

 and performed their assigned experiments. The data from the experi- 

 ments were important to the successful manned lunar landings because 

 they substantiated the fact that the lunar surface would support land- 

 ings by the Apollo astronauts. 



MARINER, MARS, AND VENUS 



On February 26, 1963, Dr. Homer E. Newell, NASA's Director of 

 Space Science and Applications, briefed the committee in an informal 

 session on the scientific results of Mariner's 36-million-mile trip to 

 fly-by the planet Venus. Mariner was adjudged by the scientific world 

 as a success in revealing new data on the mass, temperature, and nature 

 of Venus. During the early 1960's, it seemed strange to committee 

 members that Ranger had failed six times in a row to complete suc- 

 cessful experiments a quarter of a million miles away, while a 36- 

 million-mile shot to Venus was successful. As has been noted, Ranger 

 snapped out of it and scored several later successes after the early 

 failures. 



Just when it seemed that Mariner's luck was going against it by a 

 failure in 1964, Mariner IV buoyed the hope of the scientists by flying 

 within 6,200 miles of Mars on July 14, 1965. JPL, NASA, and com- 

 mittee members shared the glory of a special White House ceremony in 



