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HISTORY OF THE COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY 



During the authorization hearings, Fuqua had this colloquy with 

 Dale Myers, Associate Administrator for Manned Space Flight in 1974: 



Mr. Fuqua. The $89 million that was reduced by OMB in the request for the 

 Shuttle, if you had that money, where would you put it? 



Mr Myers. We would put it, I think, in the area of the orbiter subsystems, 

 mostly into the subcontracts on the orbiter and into the main engine. 



Mr. Fuqua. How much in the main engine would you think you'd need? 



Mr. Myers. I think it would be about $20 million of that $89 million that would 

 go into the main engines. 



As a result of this and other inquiries, primarily in the held, the 

 committee decided to add $20 million to the NASA authorization to 

 enable the work on the main engine to get back on schedule. In 1974, 

 Representative Abzug confined her opposition to critical questions 

 and neither she nor any other Member introduced an amendment to 

 cut Shuttle funding in 1974. 



The $20 million which the House added, however, was pared 

 down to a mere $5 million increase when the issue was resolved in the 

 conference committee. This prompted Mosher to observe when the 

 conference report returned to the House floor: 



The compromise reached was an increase of $5 million, or $15 million less than 

 the House had sought. This compromise is a signal that the Congress is looking to 

 NASA to hold the Space Shuttle program to original NASA estimates; we will be 

 very reluctant to provide supplementary funding for every minor program perturba- 

 tion encountered. 



As on other occasions, the committee was deeply concerned with 

 the problem of continuity of trained technicians and general manpower 

 problems in 1974. When Rockwell International President J. P. 

 McNamara was briefing the committee on minority hiring, Representa- 

 tive John N. Happy Camp (Republican of Oklahoma) wondered: "Is 

 that minority you're talking about Republican?'' 



THE SHUTTLE AND THE AUTOMOBILE 



"The Shuttle will do for the exploitation of space what the 

 automobile did for interstate travel," Winn told his colleagues during 

 the 1975 debate on the NASA authorization bill. Frey, another out- 

 spoken advocate of the Shuttle, indicated that in 1975 there were 

 almost 31 ,000 contractor employees in 47 states working on the Shuttle, 

 an employment figure which was due to rise to 34,000 in 1976 and 

 50,000 by 1977. 



By 1975, the serious, organized opposition to the Shuttle was 

 winding down. Instead of attacking the Shuttle, Representative Bella 

 S. Abzug directed her fire at a NASA-drafted section of the authoriza- 

 tion bill which empowered the NASA Administrator to prohibit the 

 disclosure of technical information if it "contains ideas, concepts or 



