227 



And I think that's good in a sense, although as an international 

 relations tool, the whole Space Station thing has been tremendous, 

 at least in my limited international involvement in it, all of the dif- 

 ferent countries that I have visited which are going to participate 

 with us, with the European Space Agency and all those. 



You know, you can feel that getting closer and closer as allies, 

 even with the Soviets if they are going to get into production and 

 launching of satellites, there will be an interesting milestone that 

 they will have to open it up for inspection, because while maybe 

 they won't let the U.S. Government go in and inspect their defense 

 establishment, no company is going to let them build a satellite 

 and launch it without somebody being there. So, you know, it's 

 kind of an opening of the "Don't come in and see what we're 

 doing." 



That takes me to something that we are going to discuss later, 

 this whole involvement of Latin America into it. I don't have any 

 idea what their capabilities are, except that they have perhaps as a 

 user community, but I was thinking more in terms of our closeness, 

 you know, with the western hemisphere and that sort of thing, to 

 use it as an international relations sort of tool. 



I just wanted to kind of impart that because I think that ought 

 to be part of NASA's objective as well. I know you are not the 

 State Department. 



Mr. Pedersen. May I respond briefly to that? 



Mr. LujAN. Yes. Surely. 



Mr. Pedersen. My point was that even — let's take the Space Sta- 

 tion — even there, if NASA had concluded that it had no interest or 

 no use for a Space Station, I think while it perhaps would have 

 been a bad decision to decide to build a Space Station just because it 

 might involve international partners in a project that would be 

 visible and would involve heads of state and so on in its planning. 

 All I am saying is that once a project is envisaged and we feel it is 

 a useful project, then most of the issues you have just talked about 

 come very much into play. 



We, of course, look at questions of who are potential partners 

 and how might they play into other broader U.S. foreign policy ob- 

 jectives. And we talk to the State Department about these types of 

 things. Even in Latin America, I would suggest that there are a 

 number of areas that NASA is working in that we have defined as 

 important scientific areas, where I believe Latin America has some 

 interesting capabilities — geodynamics, for example. 



I would feel that if you are going to seek to establish a relation- 

 ship with them which might have broader political goals, that you 

 are more likely to build a strong and mutually satisfying relation- 

 ship if you begin in areas where both parties sense they have real 

 interests, not the least of which is in the real world if an agency 

 feels mild or cool about a project, that feel they are going into it 

 just because when budget difficulties arrive, those are the first to 

 go and you wind up doing more damage internationally than if you 

 had done nothing at all. And I think we all want to avoid that. 



Mr. LujAN. Yes, I think that is a good position. Just as a matter 

 of curiosity, the two satellites that were launched now, Arabsat 

 and the next one, I would like to know did U.S. companies build 

 those? 



