SPACE SCIENCE, APPLICATIONS. AND ADVANCED RESEARCH, 1963-69 217 



Mosher also praised the fact that NASA had achieved "an almost 

 unbelievable 100-percent record of success" in launching weather 

 satellites. 



At the end of the decade, the support of the Karth subcommittee 

 for weather satellites had helped make this program one of the most 

 popular aspects of the applications program. The effective warnings 

 afforded by weather satellites enabled hundreds of thousands of resi- 

 dents of the coastal areas to evacuate successfully and safely, rather 

 than be overwhelmed, and suffer the fate which residents of the same 

 areas had met in prior hurricanes. 



COMMUNICATIONS SATELLITES 



Karth and Hechler, who joined the committee together in 1959 

 as charter members, sat next to each other in full committee meetings 

 and never had a single harsh word with each other even though they 

 frequentlv were on opposite sides of substantive issues. Hence it was 

 that when both subcommittee chairmen investigated communications 

 satellites in their respective subcommittees in the summer and fall of 

 1962, no sparks of jurisdictional squabbles were evident. 



As noted in chapter IV, Karth's subcommittee had a very productive 

 series of hearings on the Centaur launch vehicle in mid-May of 1962. 

 These hearings revealed serious development problems with the 

 Centaur launch vehicle which the Department of Defense had banked 

 on to boost its communications satellite Advent into synchronous 

 equatorial orbit. In June 1962, control of the Advent program was 

 shifted from the Army to the Air Force. Chairman Miller, concerned 

 at possible duplication between the NASA and Defense Department 

 communications satellite programs, asked Karth's subcommittee to 

 follow up the Centaur investigation with an Advent inquiry in view 

 of the fact the two programs were interrelated. In a report on Novem- 

 ber 1, 1962, Karth's subcommittee uncovered many management prob- 

 lems in the Advent program. The subcommittee recorded its strong 

 support of NASA's Associate Administrator Seamans' statement that 

 NASA and the Department of Defense — 



jointly have a very great responsibility to see that the total research and development 

 that is carried out in the communications held makes sense, that there is not undue 

 duplication, that (DOD and NASA must consider) the total requirements of the 

 Nation, both for commercial and for military purposes. 



The Karth subcommittee predicted that DOD would never meet its 

 schedule for Advent; what happened ultimately was that Advent was 

 scrapped in favor of newer technology. When the Hechler subcom- 

 mittee conducted its investigation of civilian communications satel- 

 lites, September 18 through October 4, 1962, Representative Hechler 

 opened the hearings with the announcement: 



