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mission on Marine Sciences, Engineering, and Resources are a very 
valuable contribution. 
I would like to make it clear at the outset that I consider the report 
of the Commission to be in itself an outstanding accomplishment. I 
am glad, for instance, that the House of Representatives has reprinted 
the basic Commission report. I regret that the panel reports are be- 
coming scarcer than hen’s teeth to get, and we find on our side that it 
is very difficult to secure them. I have been thinking of having one or 
two of them printed as Senate documents if we can. 
It would be exceedingly difficult, I think, to find another study 
commission that has executed its assignment in such a thorough and 
comprehensive manner. 
This is not to say that I would agree with each and every recom- 
mendation of the Commission. But in general I do give it my hearty 
support and congratulate you, Mr. Chairman and the members of 
your committee, on your legislation which seeks to move ahead in the 
direction of the Commission report and translate its recommendations 
into specific legislative proposals, an intellectual exercise that is much 
needed. 
We in the Congress are considering this report in the midst of a 
renewed public interest and enthusiasm in the exploration of outer 
space, prompted by the dazzling success of Apollo. I, too, have been 
deeply impressed, even awed, at this magnificent achievement. 
I would not venture to enter the competition in seeking for appro- 
priate adjectives to describe the first extraterrestrial visit by man. I 
would simply say it is historic. 
But I was struck recently by the historic context in which the space 
program was placed by Mr. Peter F. Drucker in his very perceptive 
book, “The Age of Discontinuity.” 
Searching for historical precedents, Mr. Drucker recalled that an- 
clent Egypt some 7,000 years ago produced two truly historic achieve- 
ments—the building of the first pyramid, and the invention of the 
plow. The building of the pyramid had a profound philosophical 
impact on man, but it was the invention of the plow, by increasing 
agricultural productivity, that vertually restructured human society. 
And then Mr. Drucker expressed the opinion that in our age, “space 
exploration is our ‘pyramids’ and the exploration of the oceans our 
6 low.’ ep) 
And I would hope that we would not only continue but expand our 
emphasis on the “plow.” 
I believe that the Marine Sciences Commission has provided us 
with a plan as to how we can best move ahead. Perhaps the most 
impressive recommendation of the report is that a single agency what- 
ever its name, and whatever existing agencies of the Government are 
included, is obviously necessary. 
Some of you may be familiar with the book that Mr. Harold L. 
Goodwin and I wrote a couple of years ago in which, by a strange co- 
incidence, we said that an agency called NOAH, although we had 
different actual initials than the NOAA recommended by the com- 
mission, should be developed, and your committee is doing a great deal 
in moving ahead, in this direction. 
I think there can be no question that, as the Commission recom- 
