224 



wanted to treat it as an imported good because we were going to 

 put it into space but we were going to bring it back, and that re- 

 quired some assistance from the committee. But that is almost, I 

 think, a unique situation. By and large, we have had very little dif- 

 ficulty with Customs, with visas and that sort of thing. 



There have been isolated instances where visas were held up as a 

 result of State Department reviews, or political concerns emerged, 

 sometimes dealing with the political persuasions of a particular sci- 

 entist abroad. But those have been fairly rare and readily easily 

 taken care of. 



Mr. FuQUA. How about proprietary rights? 



Mr. Pedersen. Proprietary rights, yes. Proprietary rights I think 

 could well become a much larger problem for us with the Space Sta- 

 tion. It's one of those issues we have identified that is going to take 

 a great deal of work. 



However, we have already faced up to some of those questions, 

 Mr. Chairman, with respect to Spacelab. As you know, Spacelab is 

 for hire. It is a user facility. And later this year the German Gov- 

 ernment, for example, will be flying a dedicated Spacelab mission 

 on which they will be performing certain experiments, as will some 

 of our users in industry in the future. And we have already put in 

 place some of the protections necessary, we believe, to protect pro- 

 prietary data, while learning enough about what is going to take 

 place to assure the safety and the interfaces, but at the same time 

 to protect the proprietary data that needs to be protected. 



On the other hand, the Space Station I think is going to present 

 us some very real challenges in that regard. And in talking with 

 the lawyers, they suggest to me that we probably will have to un- 

 dertake some major efforts here, probably on both the national and 

 international legal basis to resolve these problems. 



But I am not aware in my little area, Mr. Chairman, of the prob- 

 lem to date in protecting proprietary data where that is necessary. 



Mr. FuQUA. Mr. Packard. 



Mr. Packard. Mr. Chairman, thank you. 



You asked a very interesting question on proprietary rights, and 

 I had not thought of that in terms of the Space Station, but obvious- 

 ly that is going to be of great concern. From your response I 

 assume then that the arrangements that have been made with 

 other foreign participants is on a cooperative basis rather than a 

 purchase-sell basis? In other words, they will have a vested interest 

 in the Space Station as we will? 



Mr. Pedersen. Yes, sir. What they are doing, the ground rules £is 

 we have established them, is that they are looking toward develop- 

 ing discrete elements of the Station, in some cases pressurized mod- 

 ules, in other cases platforms of various types which they will de- 

 velop and fund with their own money and technology, which they 

 will have a continuing responsibility for maintaining and keeping 

 up, but which will be available to the various partners for use. 



So that the plan is very much one of cooperation but with a con- 

 tinuing obligation and responsibility in the program. 



Mr. Packard. So that those individual parts become a part of the 

 whole and they inherently have rights of the whole? 



Mr. Pedersen. That is right. And these are some of the princi- 

 ples that are going — when I mentioned earlier, Mr. Packard, that 



