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Mr. FuQUA. Our last witness is Ken Pedersen, Director of 

 NASA's International Affairs Division. He will testify on NASA's 

 international cooperative activities, and particularly the prospects 

 for international cooperation in the Space Station. 



Ken, we are very pleased to have you here this morning. 



STATEMENT OF KENNETH S. PEDERSEN, DIRECTOR, INTERNA- 

 TIONAL AFFAIRS DIVISION, NATIONAL AERONAUTICS AND 

 SPACE ADMINISTRATION, WASHINGTON, DC 



Mr. Pedersen. Mr. Chairman, it is nice to see you again, and 

 members of the task force. 



As a nonscientist, I am pleased to be here in such distinguished 

 company to testify on international cooperation in science and also 

 a little bit on the prospects for international cooperation and par- 

 ticularly on the Space Station. 



I know that many members of your task force, and particularly 

 you, Mr. Chairman, are extraordinarily familiar with NASA's pro- 

 grams and are well aware of the extent to which international co- 

 operation is a fundamental aspect of most all of the activities we 

 undertake. 



I have included in my written statement and will not attempt to 

 repeat here a number of the major projects, big science-type 

 projects, that we have undertaken in the past and that we are in 

 the process of undertaking or contemplating at the moment. 



I fully expect that the trend toward international cooperation in 

 space science will continue. As you are probably well aware, NASA 

 believes that many scientific, technical, financial, and political ben- 

 efits result from such cooperation. As a result, I would like to try 

 to address a couple of the questions that were raised in the study 

 which your science policy study, currently being conducted by Con- 

 gress and in which I know the task force is interested. It is an im- 

 portant topic and one we ought to be addressing. 



With regard to several specific questions, I notice that the task 

 force has posed the query as to whether, in fact, joint programs 

 really result in cost savings for the partners, given the added com- 

 plexity of international management. I would be the first to deny 

 that international cooperative programs do not add an element of 

 complexity in the management, and they can make problem-solv- 

 ing and management decision making more difficult. It's true that 

 additional funds may be necessary for travel abroad and for some 

 of the more complex administrati\^e activities associated with these 

 projects. 



At the same time, international cooperation allows us to gain sig- 

 nificantly greater capabilities with respect to a given project or 

 mission at no significant additional cost to the U.S. Government 

 for development. And in other forms of cooperation, the travel and 

 administrative costs rarely combine, in our judgment, to equal the 

 cost of developing and providing the hardware ourselves. In fact, 

 the ratio is in most cases quite small. 



By far, the greatest benefit of international cost sharing, howev- 

 er, is that of sharing the cost burdens in a constrained budget envi- 

 ronment which we have and in which we probably will continue to 

 live. The time to completion of a project can be shorter than if the 



