153 



The situation we are in now, where the backlog has grown and 

 the new starts have been reduced to one or two a year, has gotten 

 to be very painful. The future, I think, demands that there be a 

 greater level of support if we are to do what we are capable of 

 doing. It also demands that more attention be paid to the younger 

 generations of scientists who need a mode of operation to develop 

 their talents and express their ideas. There are things in that cate- 

 gory, too, that could be done now which I wish were being pushed 

 more aggressively. 



On a mission which is in space right now, the present Shuttle, 

 there is a payload called Spartan. The scientific community has 

 asked for that for 10 years now. Spartan was to be a way of very 

 easy access to space at a level comparable to what used to be the 

 old rocket program, where people in the academic arena could get 

 a simple rocket like an ARABB, put a $50,000 payload on it, and 

 achieve some very first-rate science. That permitted universities to 

 be involved in space and to bring their graduate students along. 



Spartan is a very simple concept. You take a rocket-class payload 

 and put it on a carrier which can be put out of the Shuttle, and 

 instead of getting 4 minutes of a rocket flight, it gets 2 days. And 

 then you bring it back in. It has no interfaces with the Shuttle. 



It's the simplest possible mode of operation. The scientists can 

 work independently of a lot of the interference — if I want to use it 

 that way — that comes from the usual big-science missions. And it 

 should be a very easy way for inexpensive university-type science 

 to function. 



Now, we hope this demonstration will be very persuasive, but 

 then it will be important to schedule such missions much more fre- 

 quently. Already there is a queue, I believe, of at least a dozen pay- 

 loads that would quickly move into the use of the Spartan tech- 

 nique and suddenly bring back a large community of young people 

 to the science program. 



Mr. Brown. Well, Dr. Friedman, we had some discussion of that 

 in the committee, recognizing the need, as you have expressed it, 

 discussing the range of payloads that could be put on the Shuttle to 

 accommodate the scientific community of the kinds you are de- 

 scribing through the Spacelab itself and intermediate loads that 

 might have to have some kind of support connections. 



We thought there was inadequate funding for that, which is not 

 particularly important, but we were giving that problem real con- 

 sideration here in this committee, and sympathetic consideration. 



The question I have is, is there a similar opportunity for that to 

 be expressed to the executive branch so we are not fighting with 

 them over these important scientific opportunities or priorities all 

 the time? I think we share Keyworth's concern, which we know is 

 real, for the interests of great concern, but we get hung up over 

 little questions of a few million dollars here and there about what 

 is important. And we don't know whether Keyworth or anybody in 

 OSTP or 0MB gives the attention to these items that we think 

 they are entitled to. 



Dr. Friedman. Well, the bottom line, I suppose, is what does 

 eventually happen. I will tell you that up to now we have gotten 

 encour£igement, sympathy, and we have gotten, I am sure, very 



