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HISTORY OF Till COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY 



Jack Swigerc brings to the Committee on Science and Astronautics a broadly 

 based experience, skill and enthusiasm that will aid in the expanding effort being 

 made by the Committee to assure that our national space program and federal re- 

 search and development will receive adequate support in the mid-1970's. 



Teague's interest in having a staff director with technical back- 

 ground he explained this way: 



When NASA came up here to testify with Jack Swigert here, I'm telling you, 

 they were careful about what they said. 



Prior to joining the staff, Swigert was the subject of a feature 

 article in The New York Times, at the time of the Apollo 13 flight, 

 with a four-column headline reading: "Swigert, 38, Had Girl In Every 

 (Air)Port." As the first bachelor to fly in space, Swigert was charac- 

 terized as "a man who carries several reputations with him where- 

 ever he goes- — swinger, student, sportsman, and systematizer." The 

 word "systematizer" was applied because he "likes things neat, in 

 their place." The article explained: 



"When he cleaned out my freezer one time," his sister recalls, "he had all the 

 juice cans lined up, with the lemonade before the orange juice. He said he did it 

 that way because L comes before O." 



Swigert employed the same style of systematic approach to orga- 

 nizing the committee staff. Under his direction, the staff members were 

 grouped into "task teams" to tackle broad problems arising in several 

 categories, so that if a subcommittee staff member completed work on 

 one problem he could move on to work on another subject matter 

 within the task team. 



In the four years and four months Swigert was executive director, 

 the committee staff grew steadily in size, taking a quantum jump when 

 the committee jurisdiction expanded, starting in 1975. Upon Swigert's 

 arrival in 1973, there were 22 members of the staff, and when he left 

 in August 31, 1977, to start an unsuccessful campaign for the Republi- 

 can nomination to the U.S. Senate in Colorado, the staff had grown 

 to 79. 



THE FOUR CHAIRMEN OF SPACE SCIENCE AND APPLICATIONS 



1. Representative Joseph E. Kartb of Minnesota 



Karth was the longest reigning and first chairman of the Sub- 

 committee on Space Science and Applications. During the period of 

 his chairmanship from the early 1960's until his departure to join 

 the House Ways and Means Committee in October 1971, Karth 

 championed the applications side of NASA's work. As noted in 

 chapter VII, Karth provided strong leadership in his subcommittee 

 and on the full committee to furnish more support for the Earth re- 

 sources technology satellite program (later renamed "Landsat"). 

 Within two months of the first manned landing on the Moon, Karth, 

 in September 1969, bluntly told a Princeton University symposium: 



