[House Hearing, 112 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]

COMMERCE, JUSTICE, SCIENCE, AND RELATED AGENCIES APPROPRIATIONS FOR
2013

_______________________________________________________________________

HEARINGS

BEFORE A

SUBCOMMITTEE OF THE

COMMITTEE ON APPROPRIATIONS

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

ONE HUNDRED TWELFTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
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SUBCOMMITTEE ON COMMERCE, JUSTICE, SCIENCE, AND RELATED AGENCIES
FRANK R. WOLF, Virginia, Chairman
JOHN ABNEY CULBERSON, Texas CHAKA FATTAH, Pennsylvania
ROBERT B. ADERHOLT, Alabama ADAM B. SCHIFF, California
JO BONNER, Alabama MICHAEL M. HONDA, California
STEVE AUSTRIA, Ohio JOSE E. SERRANO, New York
TOM GRAVES, Georgia
KEVIN YODER, Kansas

PART 7
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Office of Science and Technology Policy Budget Hearing........... 1
National Aeronautics and Space Administration.................... 75
National Science Foundation...................................... 171

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Printed for the use of the Committee on Appropriations

COMMERCE, JUSTICE, SCIENCE, AND RELATED AGENCIES APPROPRIATIONS FOR
2013

_______________________________________________________________________

HEARINGS

BEFORE A

SUBCOMMITTEE OF THE

COMMITTEE ON APPROPRIATIONS

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

NOTE: Under Committee Rules, Mr. Rogers, as Chairman of the Full
Committee, and Mr. Dicks, as Ranking Minority Member of the Full
Committee, are authorized to sit as Members of all Subcommittees.
Mike Ringler, Stephanie Myers, Leslie Albright,
Diana Simpson, and Colin Samples,
Subcommittee Staff
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PART 7
Page
Office of Science and Technology Policy Budget Hearing........... 1
National Aeronautics and Space Administration.................... 75
National Science Foundation...................................... 171

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Printed for the use of the Committee on Appropriations
________

U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE

74-608 WASHINGTON : 2012

COMMITTEE ON APPROPRIATIONS

HAROLD ROGERS, Kentucky, Chairman

C. W. BILL YOUNG, Florida \1\ NORMAN D. DICKS, Washington
JERRY LEWIS, California \1\ MARCY KAPTUR, Ohio
FRANK R. WOLF, Virginia PETER J. VISCLOSKY, Indiana
JACK KINGSTON, Georgia NITA M. LOWEY, New York
RODNEY P. FRELINGHUYSEN, New Jersey JOSE E. SERRANO, New York
TOM LATHAM, Iowa ROSA L. DeLAURO, Connecticut
ROBERT B. ADERHOLT, Alabama JAMES P. MORAN, Virginia
JO ANN EMERSON, Missouri JOHN W. OLVER, Massachusetts
KAY GRANGER, Texas ED PASTOR, Arizona
MICHAEL K. SIMPSON, Idaho DAVID E. PRICE, North Carolina
JOHN ABNEY CULBERSON, Texas MAURICE D. HINCHEY, New York
ANDER CRENSHAW, Florida LUCILLE ROYBAL-ALLARD, California
DENNY REHBERG, Montana SAM FARR, California
JOHN R. CARTER, Texas JESSE L. JACKSON, Jr., Illinois
RODNEY ALEXANDER, Louisiana CHAKA FATTAH, Pennsylvania
KEN CALVERT, California STEVEN R. ROTHMAN, New Jersey
JO BONNER, Alabama SANFORD D. BISHOP, Jr., Georgia
STEVEN C. LaTOURETTE, Ohio BARBARA LEE, California
TOM COLE, Oklahoma ADAM B. SCHIFF, California
JEFF FLAKE, Arizona MICHAEL M. HONDA, California
MARIO DIAZ-BALART, Florida BETTY McCOLLUM, Minnesota
CHARLES W. DENT, Pennsylvania
STEVE AUSTRIA, Ohio
CYNTHIA M. LUMMIS, Wyoming
TOM GRAVES, Georgia
KEVIN YODER, Kansas
STEVE WOMACK, Arkansas
ALAN NUNNELEE, Mississippi

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\1\Chairman Emeritus

William B. Inglee, Clerk and Staff Director

(ii)

COMMERCE, JUSTICE, SCIENCE, AND RELATED AGENCIES APPROPRIATIONS FOR
2013

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Wednesday, February 29, 2012.

OFFICE OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY POLICY BUDGET HEARING

WITNESS

HON. JOHN P. HOLDREN, DIRECTOR, OFFICE OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY POLICY

Mr. Wolf's Opening Statement

Mr. Wolf. Let the hearing begin. I apologize for being
late, we had a vote.
Good afternoon, welcome to today's hearing on the fiscal
year 2013 budget for the Office of Science and Technology
Policy.
Our witness is Dr. John Holdren, the director of OSTP, and
I appreciate you being here.
The topic of discussion today is OSTP's own budget request
for fiscal year 2013 and the request for Federal research and
development spending.
I have been a long time supporter of Federal R&D programs
and believe that our support for these programs needs to
continue even in difficult fiscal times.
This subcommittee demonstrated its commitment to that
principle last year when we increased the NSF's funding by 2
percent, and the NIST scientific and technical research
services budget by 12 percent despite having an allocation that
was substantially reduced bill-wide.
The justification for this support is simple: scientific
research is crucial for economic and national security.
Scientific innovations being worked on through Federal funding
today may turn into modern manufacturing jobs tomorrow.
There is general support for Federal science programs on
both sides of the aisle and in the Administration, and I hope
we can capitalize on our shared support to once again produce a
strong Federal science budget for fiscal year 2013.
This doesn't mean however that we will necessarily agree on
all of the details within the broader science policy area. As
you know, I strongly disagree with the Administration's
continuing push to strengthen our scientific cooperation with
China, a country that does everything from using state-owned
industry to crowd out American companies in economic sectors to
making direct assaults on the national security apparatus
through cyber infiltration.
In fact, I was in Sudan last week in a refugee camp where
the people were being killed with Chinese rockets that they
were using against the civilian population.
And just one recent example, the director of the Defense
Intelligence Agency testified that China has now developed
anti-satellite cyber warfare capabilities, and they are the
guys at its national space program. That is the same national
space program that this Administration wants NASA to be engaged
with in joint activities and bilateral assistance.
According to General Ron Burgess on February 16th,
``China's ability to track and identify satellites is enhanced
by technologies from China's space program.''
General Burgess also reported, ``China has used its
intelligence service to gather information via its significant
network of agents and contacts using a variety of methods. The
Chinese also utilize their intelligence collection to improve
their economic standing and influence foreign policy. In recent
years multiple cases of economic espionage and theft of dual
use military technology have uncovered pervasive Chinese
collection efforts.''
Yet despite these direct warnings from the U.S.
intelligence community about Chinese espionage and space
technology, some in the Administration have advocated
increasing collaboration and technology sharing with the
Chinese government and People's Liberation Army, and you all
know what their record is. The 2010 Nobel prize winner is under
prison arrest and his wife is under house arrest. We see just
in the last 60 days, there have been 15 Buddhist monks who have
set themselves aflame because of the policies.
That is why the Subcommittee began carrying language on
bilateral activity with China in fiscal year 2011, and we
maintained a version of the language in fiscal year 2012. Our
language made sure that the Administration is thinking actively
about the wisdom of its engagements with China and is being
forthcoming with the Congress over the scope of those
engagements and risks that they would pose.
We will fully address the issue of cooperation with China
today, along with other important science-related topics.
Before we do that I would like to allow my friend, Mr.
Fattah, to make any opening remarks.

Mr. Fattah's Opening Statement

Mr. Fattah. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and welcome again to
the Committee. We look forward to your testimony.
I started this morning at the Gaylord National Convention
Center where the summit on energy innovation was taking place
hosted by the Administration with some 2,500 innovators from
around the country and got an opportunity to interact with
many, and it shows that the American ability to focus on
innovation exists and is in strong supply, but that there is a
need for a government stimulus in this regard and support, and
I am very happy that the budget request of the Administration
calls for a five percent increase in non-defense R&D, and many
of these agencies fall within the purview of our subcommittee.
And as Chairman Wolf indicated, we worked very hard last
year and had very significant success, notwithstanding the
allocation, in directing additional funds towards many of these
priorities that we share with the administration.
And in addition to that we also challenged your office to
begin a process focused on collaboration around neuroscience,
and I look forward to the opportunity that we will have today
to explore where we are with that project. This collaboration
is critically important on a whole range of levels affecting
our government.
And so I thank the chairman for holding today's hearing and
I look forward to your testimony.
Mr. Wolf. Thank you.
Dr. Holdren, you can proceed, your full statement will
appear in the record.

Dr. Holdren's Opening Statement

Dr. Holdren. Well, Chairman Wolf, Ranking Member Fattah,
and members of the subcommittee, I appreciate the opportunity
to testify today on the civilian science and technology
components of the President's fiscal year 2013 budget.
President Obama in his most recent State of the Union
address called on all of us to help create an American economy
that is built to last. He called on us to work toward an
America that leads the world in educating its people, that
attracts a new generation of high-tech manufacturing and high-
paying jobs, and that takes control of its own energy.
The President's 2013 budget reflects those aims. It
includes continuing strong investment in science and
engineering research as well as in science, technology,
engineering, and math education, the kinds of investments that
have long been at the core of America's capacity to innovate,
to prosper, and to remain secure.
A detailed description of the President's 2013 R&D budget
is provided in a written testimony and in these brief remarks,
I am just going to hit a few high points.
The budget proposes $140.8 billion for Federal research and
development altogether, that is a 1.4 percent increase over
fiscal year 2012 enacted in current dollars.
I will be using current dollars in all my comparisons, but
you can convert to constant dollars with the projected
inflation rate of 1.7 percent from 2012 to 2013 if you like.
Within that $140.8 billion total the budget proposes $64.9
billion for non-defense R&D, which as Ranking Member Fattah has
pointed out, is an increase of five percent over the 2012
enacted level.
But as you know, the R&D total fits within an overall
discretionary budget that would be flat at the 2011 enacted
level for the second year in a row, consistent with the Budget
Control Act that the Congress and the President agreed upon
last August.
In order to get there we had to make some tough choices.
Even aside from defense, which saw decreases in applied
research and in development, not all of the science and
technology agencies got increases. Those that did included the
three agencies that have been identified by this Congress and
by other distinguished groups as particularly important to this
country's continued economic leadership.
NSF, the primary source of support for academic research in
most non-biomedical disciplines, got a 4.8 percent increase to
$7.4 billion. The DOE Office of Science went up 2.4 percent to
$4.6 billion. And the NIST laboratories, the labs of the
National Institutes of Standards and Technology, which play a
huge role in U.S. innovation and industrial competitiveness,
went up 13.8 percent to $708 million.
The 2013 NASA budget, at $17.7 billion, essentially flat
with last year, is consistent with the bipartisan agreement
between Congress and the Administration that balances the
agency's several crucial missions.
The budget funds continued development of the heavy lift
Space Launch System and the Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle to
enable human exploration missions beyond Earth's orbit.
It funds the operation and enhanced use of the
International Space Station, the development of private sector
systems to carry cargo and crew into low-Earth orbit, a
balanced portfolio of space and earth science, including a
continued commitment for new satellites and programs for Earth
observation, and a dynamic space technology development program
as well as a strong aeronautics research effort.
It also continues support for a scheduled 2018 launch of
the James Webb Space Telescope, the most sophisticated
observing system ever built and one that promises to show us
what the universe was like at the very earliest margins of
time.
The President's budget also proposes to expand, simplify,
and make permanent the research and experimentation tax credit
in order to spur private investment in R&D, and it maintains
momentum to enlist the private sector in our economic renewal
through such programs as the Startup America Partnership, a
non-profit alliance of successful business owners, major
corporations, and service providers.
The budget also addresses the overarching importance of
STEM education by investing $3 billion in STEM education
programs across the Federal government, a 2.6 percent increase
guided by a soon-to-be-released STEM education strategic plan.
It shows the way to cutting back on lower priority programs to
make room for targeted increases in the programs that are
working the best.
In summary, this Administration has presented a budget
aimed at ensuring that America remains at the center of the
global revolution in scientific research and technological
innovation.
I look forward to working with this subcommittee to make
this vision of the President's 2013 budget proposal a reality,
and I will be happy to try to answer any questions you may
have.
Thank you.
[The information follows:]

NASA PLANETARY SCIENCE PROPOSALS

Mr. Wolf. Thank you very much.
Let me start into planetary science and NASA. The NASA
fiscal year 2013 budget contains a significant scaling back of
the planetary science program, including decreasing the
frequency of Discovery and New Frontiers missions. They
indefinitely defer a new flagship class mission and restructure
the Mars exploration program to a lower budget level.
Do you believe these proposals are consistent with the most
recent planetary science decadal survey conducted by the
National Academies?
Dr. Holdren. Yes, Mr. Chairman, I do believe they are. The
decadal survey recognized the possibility that the budgets
might not be available to do everything that the decadal survey
recommended and they included a staged set of ways in which, if
the budget was not adequate, one could step back from some of
the most expensive missions.
We are not by any means abandoning our commitment to the
exploration of Mars. We have, as you know, the most
sophisticated lander ever developed or conceived on its way to
Mars, we have a new mission, the MAVEN mission, that will be
launched next year. NASA is looking at missions that would be
affordable for 2018 and beyond.
But as I said in my testimony, we did have to make some
tough choices overall, and finding the money for the very high
priorities on the heavy lift vehicle, the crew capsule,
commercial crew, the James Webb, finding the money to advance
those programs within an obviously limited total did require
cutting back on some things that, in better times, we would
love to continue to do.
Mr. Wolf. The Mars proposal has received the most attention
in the press because it involves the decision to discontinue
work on two identified missions generically referred to as Mars
2016 and Mars 2018. These missions were to be done in
conjunction with the European Space Agency, ESA.
Would this budget request result in NASA breaking an
agreement with ESA on the 2016 or 2018 missions, and would the
request diminish ESA's willingness to make future plans with us
in other areas?
Dr. Holdren. Well, first of all, from any knowledge it does
not require breaking any agreements. We were, as I understand
it, in the exploratory stage in respect to----
Mr. Wolf. But wasn't something signed? I thought something
had been signed.
Dr. Holdren. I don't think anything had been signed that
was a commitment to go forward with the mission. We were in an
exploratory stage, as I understand it, with ESA and they have
now been informed that our budget is not going to allow us to
go forward with those two missions based on all current
understandings, but they are clearly still willing to work with
us on a variety of projects, and the----
Mr. Wolf. Would this request diminish their willingness to
make future plans with us?
Dr. Holdren. I do not believe it will. We have been in
conversation about the Euclid program, and my understanding is
that ESA is likely to accept NASA's offer to participate in the
Euclid program, that is, a program in which a space telescope
will make very important contributions potentially to probing
dark energy and measuring cosmological parameters, and it
appears that they will be happy to work with us on that program
and I believe on others.
I think there is a widespread understanding, Mr. Chairman,
that the budgetary times in which we find ourselves are
extraordinary, and we have been in conversation with our
partners across a range of issues about those demands. Most of
our partners are also experiencing, as you know, difficult
financial times and so they have been pretty understanding.
Mr. Wolf. Okay. No, I understand.
The U.S. has been the undisputed leader in Mars exploration
throughout the history of the program and has developed unique,
possibly irreplaceable, expertise in areas like Mars entry,
descent and landing technology.
Will the restructuring of the program endanger our
international leadership in Mars exploration, and how will you
ensure that critical skills and knowledge are retained during
this time of restructuring?
Dr. Holdren. Well, as I mentioned, Mr. Chairman, I believe
we are not surrendering our leadership in Mars exploration.
Nobody has anything remotely close to the Mars Science Lab,
Curiosity, which we expect to land there in August. It was
launched last November. The MAVEN mission will be the first
mission to be launched in 2013, which will explore the Martian
upper atmosphere and increase understanding of that. We are
looking at Discovery missions and New Frontiers missions that
will be affordable that will continue to advance our leadership
in Mars exploration.
I believe that we will manage to remain the leaders,
notwithstanding these budget constraints that we are currently
working with.
Mr. Wolf. Who in the world would be second? Who would be
second today?
Dr. Holdren. Well, I think Russia is still second, but the
European space effort is certainly making a strong effort, and
one could argue, depending on what the metric is, whether ESA
or Russia is now in second place.
Mr. Wolf. Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson had an excellent piece in
Foreign Affairs this month regarding the future of the space
program and the enduring impact of the Mercury, Gemini, and
Apollo programs on our national conscience. While he finds
faults with both Republicans and Democrats for the current
state of our space program, he specifically points out much of
the empty rhetoric from the Administration.
According to one example he references, the Obama
Administration's economic stimulus legislation proposed
doubling Federal science agencies, but he says all that NASA
got from the stimulus was a directive on how to allocate one
billion of its existing budget with no extra funding at all.
Have you read the piece?
Dr. Holdren. Yes. Well, I have skimmed it, sir, I just got
a hold of it yesterday, as a matter of fact, and it is an
interesting piece.
Neil deGrasse Tyson is a friend, he gave me a heads up that
this was coming and, you know, his main point in the speech is
it would be great if we could double the budget of the space
program, which would be great in better economic times. If we
could spend more money, we could do more and those of us who
have been space enthusiasts since childhood, as I have, would
love to be able to see us do more, but as I keep saying, there
are hard choices to be made in these budgetary times and Dr.
Tyson's proposal that we should double the NASA budget is
simply, as I know members of this committee know, not realistic
in the current circumstances. We simply can't afford it.
Mr. Wolf. Well, I have other questions. Why don't I just
submit them and then why don't you finish reading it. Then it
would be better.
Dr. Holdren. Sure. No, absolutely.
Mr. Wolf. That would be fair for you to have that
opportunity. One last question on this and then I will go to
Mr. Fattah.

ENSURING ACCESS TO THE INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION

As you know the Russian Soyuz missions to the International
Space Station have been delayed twice in the past six months
due to concerns over the safety of the Soyuz capsule and the
Progress rocket.
I have been told that, should the Station need to be
demanned for more than a few months, there is a serious risk
that it could be completely lost. Do you think that is accurate
or not?
Dr. Holdren. I am not sure of the exact parameters.
Obviously there is a vulnerability, you know, being dependent
exclusively on Soyuz for access to the Space Station and that
is one of the reasons that we have, in the President's 2013
budget, increased from 2012 propositions the money for
commercial crew because we need to get that on a fast track in
order to minimize the duration of our dependence on Soyuz.
Mr. Wolf. It says for a few months. How much time do you
think this would be a problem, three months, five months, six
months, or does anyone----
Dr. Holdren. I am sure NASA has an answer to that question,
sir. I cannot answer it off the top of my head and would prefer
not to try to preempt NASA's analysis.
Mr. Wolf. Sure. Because you know the Station is a $100
billion asset, it would be unacceptable to allow it to deorbit
because the Administration refused to fully consider all
options.
Let me ask you just about some things that people said.
What is the Administration's plan B in the event of a critical
Soyuz failure? Is there a plan B?
Dr. Holdren. Again, I am sure that NASA has a plan B, but I
am not in a position to describe it to you.
We again find it unfortunate that we are in the position of
depending exclusively on Soyuz. This is not a desirable
circumstance. Soyuz has overall been a very reliable system and
so obviously we are all crossing our fingers that it continues
to be.
Mr. Wolf. Well, it has been delayed twice in the last six
months.
This is sort of the same, but given that even the most
optimistic of commercial crew projections preclude access
before 2017, what is the Administration's plan for emergency
access to the Station between now and 2017, especially in the
event of a critical Soyuz failure? Is there any?
Dr. Holdren. I believe the most expeditious way to do that
would be to fix the Soyuz. Again, the Soyuz has a very long and
highly reliable record. It is hard to imagine what could go
wrong with Soyuz that could not with repaired more rapidly than
a substitute system would be developed.
You know, Mr. Chairman, the reason that we stopped flying a
shuttle, which, as you know, was a decision made by the Bush
Administration, but one which we believe was the correct
decision, was that the major review bodies that looked at the
shuttle in light of its operating experience, its complexity,
and the difficulty of maintaining it, and also taking into
account that the shuttle was so expensive to operate that as
long as we were operating it under any reasonable budget
assumptions, we couldn't afford to develop the replacement for
it.
And so again, if NASA had twice the money it has, we
wouldn't be in this fix, but the last Administration didn't
provide the budgets and we are not able, in this
Administration, to provide the budgets to have multiple layers
of options for dealing with this challenge.
Mr. Wolf. Are there any circumstances under which the
Administration would use the Orion capsule on an existing U.S.
rocket to ensure emergency access to the Station in the event
of an emergency?
Dr. Holdren. I would expect, sir, that that is being looked
at by NASA, but I have not seen the analysis.
Mr. Wolf. I hope someone is looking at it.
Dr. Holdren. Oh, I think it is a very good assumption that
NASA is looking at it. NASA has a lot of smart folks and they
tend to look at a very wide range of contingencies.
Mr. Wolf. Okay. I am going to go to Mr. Fattah.
I just wanted to know--and you are an expert and I am not--
but you have so many private competitors competing. Is any
there idea of getting their best together? Because some are
going to drop out. We are going to have this one drop out and
then this one drop out, and that is a lot of money involved.
Would it make sense or have you considered combining them into
a star team, if you will, in order to eliminate some of the
costs that will be incurred as they drop out and so that this
can be expedited somewhat?
Dr. Holdren. Well, Mr. Chairman, I do have some expertise
in rocket science. I don't have any in corporate management and
mergers.
I imagine, in principle, no. In principle, I think one of
the things that may happen is that some of the technology from
firms that drop out when it is good technology will be bought
by the firms that stay in.
I also can imagine certainly that there would be mergers,
but there are, as you know, some very big companies in this
competition like Boeing and Lockheed as well as some smaller
ones, and my assumption is that the folks who are structuring
this effort who have a lot more expertise than I do in how to
incentivize and oversee a private sector effort of this sort
know what they are doing, but it is not my expertise.
Mr. Wolf. Well, I don't know what the answer is, so I will
make it clear that I don't. But it seems to me they are all
hiring lobbyists, they are all running around doing this and
doing that, and it would help to kind of come together under
the leadership of NASA to use their varied expertise--we are
not asking for any company to fold--but to come together. You
know, some people do this better, some people do that, and that
way I think you would eliminate some of the waste that I think
you are going to see. But you know, that is your call.
Dr. Holdren. Well, you know, and it is a multistage process
in which I can imagine future stages being structured
differently than the current stage.
Mr. Wolf. Okay. So well, if you have any thoughts on that
if you will let us know.
[The information follows:]

My understanding is that NASA has assessed this scenario and
believes that using a teaming arrangement to combine or consolidate
launch vehicle elements developed by different firms would ultimately
take longer and cost more than NASA's current approach. Under current
procurement rules, NASA would be required (with only limited
exceptions) to issue competitive solicitations separately for each
vehicle element and then work with the various industry providers to
integrate these elements into a complete launch capability--an
inherently more complex and lengthy procurement process. Further, such
a teaming arrangement could eliminate some of the incentives for
innovation in developing a comprehensive, unique crew transportation
system with potential applicability to other customers or markets.
Finally, NASA's current early-phase competition approach has another
key benefit in that it will allow time for these new proposals to
evolve and mature, which will not only facilitate NASA's analysis of
proposals and ultimate selection process, but also yield a broader
array of novel technologies and capabilities that may be suitable for
adoption in other applications.

Mr. Fattah.
Mr. Fattah. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Two things on the chairman's comments. One is I support his
interest and concern about what we are going to do relative to
planetary science and Mars. I understand the budget constraint,
but I think that is something that the committee will continue
to explore with you about what can be done in that regard. And
we do look forward to the landing of Curiosity, on August the
6th I think is the game plan.
But on his point about collaboration, I was out at the
Pratt & Whitney plant in Hartford in the jet engine museum, and
I saw that on a number of their ``top tens'' there was
collaboration with their competitors, whether it was Rolls
Royce or GE and the like.
So it is not unheard of and there may be a great deal of
wisdom in the chairman's point that there may be more to be
gained by collaboration among some of the commercial crew
companies than by pure competition.
For the good of the country we might want to try to
encourage that where possible. But obviously there are benefits
to some competition also.
But I want to get to two issues, one general and one
specific.
Generally, the Administration is focused on science as it
relates to enhancing advanced manufacturing, particularly now
in technology and the like. I want you to talk a little bit
about that.
And then I want to have you comment on the new initiative
on neuroscience, and Dr. Rubin and his work and how you see
that unfolding.

ADVANCED MANUFACTURING

Dr. Holdren. Okay. Well, first of all there is a strong
commitment to advanced manufacturing. Manufacturing has been an
important, although declining, part of our economy. We would
like to see it strengthened again and we think advanced
manufacturing offers a great potential for doing this. That
ambition is reflected, in part, in the substantial increases in
the NIST budget around advanced manufacturing.
We have an advanced manufacturing partnership that was set
up, co-chaired by the president of MIT and the CEO of Dow, that
has been meeting and offering recommendations about how we can
move forward.
We have the Startup America entrepreneurship program, we
have new ideas about shared facilities with which small and
medium size manufacturers can have access to equipment and
processes that they wouldn't be able to afford on their own.
So this is a big thrust and we think it is going to be a
successful thrust in bringing back some of America's previous
preeminence in manufacturing. We think it is very important to
do that. It is not the whole economy, but it is an important
part of the economy.

NEUROSCIENCE

The second thing I would say on your point about
neuroscience. We have taken very seriously your recommendation
of some time ago to see what we could do to structure an
initiative in neuroscience around three themes that you, I
think, correctly identified.
One was disease, what can we do about Alzheimer's and other
diseases of the brain. A second is cognition. How can we apply
current understandings from neuroscience and cognitive learning
to improve how people learn and how we teach? And the third is
injury. How we can deal better with traumatic brain injuries of
the sort that unfortunately have been all too abundant in our
service people serving abroad?
We have just brought on board finally this week, after a
long search, a new senior scientific staffer, Dr. Phil Rubin,
who is a leader in neuroscience and will be the point person in
our trying to advance an initiative in this domain.
I think with Phil Rubin on board we now have what we need,
in terms of the right expertise, to work with the other
agencies, and of course particularly the NIH, but also the VA,
and others in the cognitive area, of course NSF and the
Department of Education as well, to move this forward.
So we hope to have some good results to report to you going
forward.
Mr. Fattah. Thank you very much.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Wolf. Mr. Culberson.
Mr. Culberson. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

OSTP'S ROLE IN SCIENCE BUDGET DEVELOPMENT

Dr. Holdren, the role you play at the White House is to
obviously advise the President on science matters and in
advising the President your recommendations obviously carry a
great deal of weight and have a great deal of influence on what
OMB does in their recommendations, right? Are you the principal
driver of science policy at the White House?
Dr. Holdren. I could not say that I am the only driver.
Certainly we work in conjunction with----
Mr. Culberson. Principal.
Dr. Holdren [continuing]. With OMB, very much in
partnership with OMB in developing the R&D budgets of all of
the agencies that have science and technology admissions. It
really is a partnership.
I would hate to have Jack Lew in the room and say that I am
in charge.
Mr. Culberson. No, no, no, no.
Dr. Holdren. We are jointly in charge.
Mr. Culberson. Sure. But you are the principal driver of
science policy in the White House.
Dr. Holdren. I am the principal advisor on science policy
in the White House.
Mr. Culberson. Right. Yeah, because the statute in 1976
which created your office says your function is to provide
within the Executive Office of the President advice on
scientific, engineering and technological aspects of issues
that require attention at the highest level of government, and
you're the source obviously of scientific and technological
analysis and judgment for the president with respect to major
policies, plans, and programs.
You clearly have a major impact on the scientific
initiatives announced by the White House and the budget.
When the President put forward and passed in the last
Congress a $975 billion stimulus, and you just said if we could
just simply increase NASA's funding we wouldn't have this gap
in man space flight.
I know that for example in my own experience in west
Houston we were able to build and complete the largest freeway
expansion project in the history of the State of Texas through
my district because we were able to get approval from the
Highway Department to allow the local toll road authority to
come in and front load the money to finish it out. We put four
additional new lanes down the center of Interstate 10, those
local toll dollars, the local toll road authority was able to
inject $500 million cash up front in the project and enabled us
to finish the project in record time, five years and three
months, and clearly the space program is a capital intensive
effort that requires a lot of cash.
You are the principal advisor of the President, why is it
that you as the advisor of the President you tell us you are
committed to NASA, you tell us you want to see NASA get more
money yet under your leadership and this White House NASA
didn't get one dime of a $975 billion stimulus bill? Why?
Dr. Holdren. Because there was a lot of competition for
that stimulus money.
Mr. Culberson. Not one dime.
Dr. Holdren. If I had had my druthers, Congressman, the
stimulus would have been bigger.
Mr. Culberson. Not one dime. But not even a dollar. You
didn't even get a dollar for NASA. That is pathetic.
Dr. Holdren. I did not craft the stimulus.
Mr. Culberson. You are the principal advisor for science.
Dr. Holdren. I offered----
Mr. Culberson. I think it is very upsetting. It is very
upsetting.
Dr. Holdren. I offered my advice. There are many things,
Congressman, that upset me in this business, it is a
frustrating situation to be in with the kinds of budget
situations we have to live with.
Mr. Culberson. Well, I want to be clear I opposed the
stimulus, but you know, the fact that it was done, it was done
under your watch, your leadership, I don't think it is
appropriate, and of course I am very frustrated too with the
previous administration.
This wonderful subcommittee that I have the privilege of
serving on there are just no party boundaries, I mean there are
no party labels when it comes to this committee's support for
the sciences.
And Chairman Wolf, Mr. Fattah, all of us work arm-in-arm.
Alan Mollohan as chairman. I mean you guys all remember this
sand chart that Sean O'Keefe, remember this one, the famous
sand chart that Sean O'Keefe came out with when President Bush
announced the vision for space exploration. This was never
adequately funded, and of course that caused him those
problems.
So that is why I am so frustrated and upset about, I mean
if you are going to do the stimulus you get it through
Congress, you guys are completely in charge, why couldn't you
even get $1 for NASA out of $975 billion, what happened?
Dr. Holdren. Sir, when you say completely in charge there
is nobody completely in charge. This is a complicated process,
there were many opinions heard, and NASA did not----
Mr. Culberson. Not $1, why?
Dr. Holdren [continuing]. Did not come out well in the
stimulus.
Mr. Culberson. So when you tell us you are committed to the
space program, and I find it, it is just very frustrating and
disappointing.
Dr. Holdren. I share your frustration.
Mr. Culberson. What could have been done with that money up
front if you had front loaded it as we did this huge freeway
expansion in west Houston, these huge capital investments that
are required for the space program.
I hope all of us in Congress will ultimately move away from
this annual year-to-year funding of NASA. I would love to see
us move towards funding them like we do building these giant
rockets and these expensive missions as the Navy builds
aircraft carriers or submarines, they do multi-year procurement
for those massively expensive programs, and it is something I
hope we will all look at and consider. That is something I have
talked to Chairman Ralph Hall about and would love to work with
all of you guys in finding a way to get away from this year-to-
year pillar-to-post funding that is so damaging to the morale
of these magnificent men and women, the scientists and
engineers who devote their lives, their greatest passion in
life is to see America lead the world in space exploration and
they just deserve better than this. They really deserve our--as
they have from this subcommittee and I really hope we will move
away from the annual year to year pillar to post spending and
move towards longer range----
Dr. Holdren. Congressman, I agree with that.
Mr. Culberson [continuing]. Stable, committed, funding
driven by the scientific community.
Dr. Holdren. I would love to see that myself.
Mr. Culberson. That would be marvelous.
Dr. Holdren. I agree.
Mr. Culberson. Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Wolf. Mr. Schiff.

MARS EXPLORATION FUNDING

Mr. Schiff. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Director, I am going
to go straight to it. I am deeply troubled by the NASA budget
in which science is cut overall by $62 million planetary
science by more than $300 million resulting in the
Administration's decision to withdraw from the ExoMars program
with ESA that would have put an orbiter around the red plant in
2016 and a lander on the surface two years later.
I don't need to tell you that Mars Sample Return is the top
scientific priority, you know, the top of the decadal survey
along with another wonderful project involving Europa. No
component of our space program has generated more consistent
public interest and attention over the last decade than our
robotic exploration of the red planet.
In the days following Spirit's landing in early 2004 NASA's
web servers crashed under assault from literally millions of
people around the world eager to see the latest pictures from
the Martian surface.
By proposing a cut of more than $300 million the
Administration not only threatens the most successful
exploration program in NASA history, it also imperils what is
certainly the world's most specialized workforce, engineers and
scientists at JPL who specialize in entry, descent, and landing
on other planets.
I also don't need to tell you how difficult it is to do
this kind of work. That there have been more failures around
the world among others who have tried than successes. This is
the only country that has succeeded in landing on Mars.
This is a workforce capability that cannot take long
periods of inactivity, and I don't think the Administration's
reconfigured Mars program as nebulous as that is offers any
promise of maintaining that workforce.
Cannibalizing the Mars program which has gotten closer and
closer to unlocking the secrets of Mars with each mission is a
huge step backwards for NASA.
The chairman asked you about American leadership in this
area. And I think this is about more than a laboratory. It is
about more than the Mars program. This is about America's
leadership in planetary science. We are the undisputed world
leader. We have to go to the Russians to get a lift to the
Space Station, but in planetary science we are unparalleled.
And I do not know how you can say we are going to maintain
that. And I do not know how you can point to MSL. And it
disturbs me, frankly, to have you point to MSL, and have the
Administrator point to MSL as evidence of our continuing
commitment to the Mars program when the fact of the matter is
if MSL was on the drawing board right now you would be here
telling us you are canceling it. And you and the head of NASA
are resting on the laurels of the generation that made that
possible. And pulling the plug out on the next generation that
could make even more spectacular missions possible.
The ESA, the chairman asked, you know, who is next in the
leadership here? Well, ESA is going forward without us. They
are going forward to do the top scientific priority in
planetary science, the one that we are backing out of. ESA is
going forward and they are going to Russia, and probably China,
and asking them to step in where American has stepped away from
its leadership role. And I think that is deeply tragic.
I share Mr. Culberson's concern with the overall NASA
funding level. But the problem here is not the overall funding
level in and of itself. The problem is that we now have a
proposal for a very unbalanced portfolio within NASA that
basically shafts planetary science. And I think that is a
terrible abdication of our leadership role. And, you know, I do
not usually use language this strongly but I am determined to
fight this tooth and nail because I think this is an area where
the world recognizes us as the unparalleled leader. It is an
unmitigated positive. And for us to walk back from that, run
back from that, I think is a tragic decision.
Mr. Culberson. If the gentleman would yield?
Mr. Schiff. I would be happy to yield.
Mr. Culberson. I just want to agree 100 percent with what
he said, other than I want to make sure obviously if we cannot
do Mars we defer to the Europa mission. But I agree with you
100 percent, Adam.
Mr. Schiff. Well I thank my colleague. But the way the
current budget works neither of the top decadal priorities are
going to go anywhere. And we are fast moving to the point where
we have given up our leadership in manned spaceflight and we
are going to give up our leadership in planetary science as
well. And I would invite your comment on it. But I just cannot
tell you how distressed I am to see this change in direction.
Dr. Holdren. Well, I am usually happy to see bipartisan
agreement but in this particular case I have to say I
understand your frustration. I wish it were otherwise. The
frustration that we have experienced in the administration is
very similar to the frustration experienced in the Congress.
That is, on the one hand, everybody accepts and understands
that budgets have to be flat overall in the fiscal environment
in which we find ourselves, and everybody is unhappy when we
cannot increase or when we have to decrease, in order to make
room for other programs that have higher priority to grow,
programs that we like. We made tough choices.
If you go back to the history of how we got to where we are
in terms of the current balance in NASA you will remember that
there was an enormously contentious debate within Congress,
between the two houses of Congress, between Congress and the
administration about what the ingredients of the space program
needed to be. And the result of that debate was agreement to
make very heavy investments in a heavy lift vehicle and in the
Orion MultiPurpose Crew Vehicle which basically took a big
chunk of the budget that initially the President had not
proposed to do.
Mr. Schiff. Mr. Director, if I can interrupt you there?
Yes, that was part of the grand compromise. But part of that
agreement, and part of the representation by the administration
was that planetary science would go on. That a Mars 2016
mission would go on. That a Mars 2018 mission would go on. That
Europa would go on. So now the administration is reneging.
And Mr. Chairman, I have to tell you you were absolutely
right. Last year when you expressed the concern that James Webb
would, among other things, cannibalize everything else you were
absolutely, absolutely right. I did not want to believe it, but
you were absolutely right. And I think it very poor management
for NASA to say that we will reward labs that are poorly
managed, that have extraordinary cost overruns, by savaging
labs that are well run and that do not. And that is a poor
management decision. But more than that, what so disturbs me
about this is that there are many areas where America seems to
be ceding its leadership in the world. This is an area of
unparalleled American leadership. But we are stepping away from
this, too. And I intend to fight that and I think that is a
tragic setback for the country.
Dr. Holdren. Well, Congressman Schiff, I was going to get
to the James Webb, which was another part, obviously, of the
expensive portfolio of projects that NASA has. It is also a
science project. It is ranked very highly by a large part of
the science community and it is expensive. It will be a hundred
times more capable than the Hubble. It will bring us incredible
results. And some tough decisions were made that we needed to
go ahead with the James Webb under tighter fiscal circumstances
than were imagined when we had the initial debate with the
Congress about NASA.
I think it is not really fair to fault the administration
for what it said it thought we could do in 2009 and 2010 when
the financial circumstances under which we now labor are more
difficult than they were then.
Mr. Schiff. And Mr. Director, and this will be my last
point and then I will be happy to yield back, I am not talking
about what was thought in 2009. I am talking about what was
thought in 2012, in the 2012 budget, meaning last year. NASA's
budget is relatively flat from last year to this year.
Dr. Holdren. Yes.
Mr. Schiff. So the budget has not changed, nor was the
expectation that the budget would change dramatically from last
year to this year. So how then do you account for the dramatic
change in planetary science? I have to conclude that the
administration, OMB, knew all along that they were going to
cancel the Mars missions but they did not want to be candid
with Congress because they knew it would not fly. And I find
that very disturbing. Because the budget is not that different
than last year. But NASA has made the decision to jettison its
partnership with the ESA and its leadership role in this area.
And I have to conclude that that was just disingenuousness on
the administration's part.
Dr. Holdren. Well, Congressman, I have to say I did not
know that those Mars missions were going to become
unaffordable. I personally did not know that. I cannot
speculate on who else in the administration might have imagined
what about future budgets. But if you look at the difference
between the 2012 budget and the 2013 budget obviously one of
the things that happened was in the 2012 budget the Congress
gave us too little money to keep commercial crew on a fast
track. And it is a priority for this administration, and I
think it is a priority for the Congress as previous questions
have indicated. We have got to minimize the gap between the end
of the shuttle and the beginning of our ability to launch
American astronauts into low-Earth orbit on American vehicles.
Otherwise, we squander the $100 billion investment that is
sitting up there in the Space Station, as Chairman Wolf has
already pointed out. So these are tough choices.
Again, I share your frustration but they are tough choices.
We propose this year to get commercial crew back on a track
that will minimize that gap. That costs something like $450
million more than was in the 2012 budget for commercial crew.
And if you want to fix planetary science you have to figure out
where it is going to come from. And somebody's ox is going to
get gored.
Mr. Schiff. And by presenting this as a fait accompli, as
the administration is trying to do, you are trying to pit one
NASA institution, one space effort, against another. If
commercial crew could not be affordable last year, you should
have said so. If Mars could not be affordable, you should have
said so. The Mars costs have not gone up. These are future
planned missions. It is not like we have suddenly new cost
estimates for the Mars program.
But Mr. Chairman, I think I have made my point and I
appreciate your indulgence of the extra time, and I yield back.
Dr. Holdren. Can I just say it is never a fait accompli, it
is always a negotiation with the Congress. I mean, this is the
President's proposal. And, you know, obviously I am here
discussing it with you folks who are key to determine what
ultimately will happen.
Mr. Wolf. Well that is why I asked the question earlier,
which was just my thought. I understand these commercial crew
companies have an investment. But if they could all come
together, you have saved from that. Because in essence what you
are going to do, and I am not the expert that NASA is, but you
are going to finish the commercial crew in what year? 2018,
probably. And I even saw where one of your people said if we do
not get the full amount we are in trouble. So if you are
talking about 2018 and you are going to decommission the Space
Station in 2020, as bad of an idea as that is, maybe you should
just fold this in and look at some other way in bringing the
companies together. They all have a lobby shop, they all have a
personnel office, and they could all have all these things
together, whereby you could fund some of the other priorities.
But that is why I made the comment.
And I think you have to participate. You have forgotten
more about this than most of us up here know. And your people
in NASA. But there must be a way, if you take away all the
political environments in these companies, and their activities
on the Hill, and who they are hiring. I mean, one of them is
hiring every lobby shop in town, it seems. If you could just
stop that, if they can, and come together, you may be able to
drive that cost down.
Because if you are going to spend all this money, and you
are going to get your commercial crew vehicle in 2018, you are
going to have a year or two to use it. That is if everything
goes really well and they get everything they say. So maybe it
is 2019, could it be? And the Station ends in 2020, or
something. Is there another way of doing it? But I think we
would really need you to participate, to come up, and the same
way with the NASA Administrator to help us. Because----
Dr. Holdren. Well Mr. Chairman, I will participate. But we
have said about the Space Station that we will, we intend to
maintain the Space Station at least until 2020. It is not a
predetermined----
Mr. Wolf. Right, I understand----
Dr. Holdren [continuing]. Conclusion that the Space Station
is going to be de-orbited in 2020.
Mr. Wolf. No, but then is there another way----
Dr. Holdren. But I hear you. I hear you on the point about
consolidation and cooperation in the commercial sector, and I
will certainly take that message back and discuss it with
Administrator Bolden and try to understand better what the
thinking is. I am certainly prepared to participate, as you
suggest, in the discussion of how we can optimize this process.
Mr. Wolf. And then that way you would have some money for
this. And I think the sooner you do this, the better. If it is
done a year and a half or two years from now, the money will
have been expended and there will not be the opportunity.
Dr. Holdren. Yeah, I just do not know if there is real
potential there, Mr. Chairman, to save money or not. But I am
happy to look into it with the Administrator.
Mr. Wolf. Well there may not be. Mr. Fattah.
Mr. Fattah. One possibility, Mr. Chairman, is that when the
House does its budget, maybe we can get a stronger allocation
for NASA. Because I hear from my friend from Texas that there
is some energy behind our call to get more investment in
science. It is impossible to fit all these projects in
together. I disagree with the decision package as you provided
it. But I do understand that you cannot have the Webb
telescope, the launch vehicle to go to Mars, which is now being
fully funded based on the agreement that has been set,
particularly with the Senate, and all these other pieces
wrapped up together. So the question becomes either you have to
enlarge the budget overall, or something is going to get
squeezed out.
The question really is, in the decision package, where
should we go. Because if on one level we are developing a
vehicle to travel to Mars, but on the other level we are
cutting some of the planetary science activities that will be
vital to our long term success in that regard, maybe we are
working at cross purposes. But I think the size of the stimulus
was set because my Republican colleague from Pennsylvania said
he would not vote for anything higher than a particular number
and he was the only Republican we could get. So the number was
set.
But I am glad that there is room now for more investment on
this, particularly on the majority side. But in reality the
chairman knows that you have the senators who take these
matters as their prerogative and there is going to have to be a
meeting of the minds between the chairman and his counterpart
in the Senate around NASA's final budget number. But it is
impossible to get all of these projects to fit within this
total, something slightly below $17 billion.
Mr. Wolf. Mr. Aderholt.

COMPETITION IN NSF FUNDING INITIATIVES

Mr. Aderholt. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Dr. Holdren, thank
you for being here today, and for your testimony. I wanted to
ask a little bit, something about the National Science
Foundation. I would like to have your comments on the subject
of competition. For competition for NSF itself to be successful
as a mission. And really just whether your comments apply
broadly to the small individual scientific grants, to the large
NSF centers, and also the cooperative agreements for running
the NSF science facilities.
Dr. Holdren. Well, first of all I would say obviously, as
your question suggests, NSF has a portfolio of approaches for
funding science. They are responsible for funding a huge
variety of kinds of science across the non-biomedical domains.
And so I think it is reasonable to expect, given that variety,
that some of the domains in which they fund require a different
model than others. But NSF is the bastion of peer reviewed
scientific research support. And I think Dr. Suresh, Subra
Suresh, the relatively new Director of NSF, is doing a fabulous
job of managing that big portfolio. I am not sure exactly where
your question is heading beyond that.
Mr. Aderholt. Well I guess just your thoughts on the
importance of competition in general when you know you are
looking at these different grants and these different
facilities. What importance would you put on competition?
Dr. Holdren. I put high importance on competition. I think
competition is crucial and it is a hallmark of the way NSF
distributes its funds on the whole.

SPACE LAUNCH SYSTEM DEVELOPMENT

Mr. Aderholt. Thank you. Over the course of two fiscal
years Congress appropriated a bit over $3.6 billion for the
SLS. The bill language requires parallel development of the
core and upper stage. The President signed those bills into
law. My question is, is the administration, of course through
NASA, making parallel programs on both the core and the upper
stage? Or as some believe has the work on the upper stage been
deliberately put on a little of a slower schedule?
Dr. Holdren. I must say I have to refer you to
Administrator Bolden on that. I am not aware of any deviation
from the specifications of the law on NASA's pursuit of that
program. But that is one in which I do not have any insight off
the top of my head.
Mr. Aderholt. So it is your understanding they are doing
parallel progress on both?
Dr. Holdren. Again, I would refer you to Administrator
Bolden for a reliable answer on that. Because I am simply not
up to date.
Mr. Aderholt. But you would assume they are doing what the
law requires?
Dr. Holdren. I assume they are doing what the law requires,
yes. That would always be my assumption.
Mr. Aderholt. Part of the plan for future years of the SLS
system is to produce a new booster. Would you be in favor of
developing a new booster made here in the United States as
opposed to a foreign booster such as the Russian booster?
Dr. Holdren. I think the details of that choice belong
properly in NASA. Obviously, all else being equal, I would be
in favor of a U.S. booster, yes. But I do not want to preempt
the kinds of considerations that NASA would go through
depending obviously, among other things, on costs. Clearly they
are going to take into account both the desirability of doing
it domestically but also relative costs. And I do not, at the
moment, have access into their thinking on that choice.
Mr. Aderholt. The request this year for SLS is below the
authorized level for it, SLS. The figure should be $2.64
billion. The ground operations were actually authorized in a
separate part of NASA's budget from space operations for $400
million. Your testimony, I believe, says that you requested
$1.9 billion for SLS. Is that correct?
Dr. Holdren. I believe it is.
Mr. Aderholt. I think the concern is that that is a little
bit misleading. If in fiscal year 2013 you do not request $1.9
billion for SLS, you request $1.4 billion. Even though space
operations has a request of almost a $1 billion, for two years
in a row NASA headquarters has carved out hundreds of millions
of dollars from the SLS rocket development funding. The
committee requested that you have a separate category for
ground operations so that you would not continue to take SLS
funds. Your funding request reflects an approach of once again
carving this funding out of SLS. And the concern is, quite
honestly, is that the rocket development program, especially
when China and other nations are moving ahead rapidly on their
own heavy lift programs. So the low request makes it almost
impossible for the program manager to keep on schedule and
reduce risk.
If this committee overrules the low budget request and
provides more funding, will your advice to the President be to
develop this rocket in a more urgent way? And will you advise
him to support the fiscal year 2014 and beyond so that the
nation, this nation will not be left without a heavy lift
capacity?
Dr. Holdren. Well, first of all Congressman Aderholt, let
me say that my understanding is that the ground support systems
for heavy lift are an integral part of being ready to test that
rocket in 2017. And my understanding is that NASA's allocation
of funds within the $1.885 billion requested for the SLS is
designed to have the components come together in a manner that
will enable that 2017 test.
Obviously it is a challenge. It is always a challenge in
projects of this magnitude and nature to stay within budget and
on schedule and it is an even bigger challenge in the overall
budget constraints that we face. But I believe that NASA is
doing everything it can under the budget constraints we face to
get to that 2017 test of the SLS system. And obviously if
Congress comes up with a different result and passes a bill and
the President signs it, my advice to the President will be to
follow the law and to pursue the program that the Congress has
authorized and appropriated.
Mr. Aderholt. Thank you.
Mr. Wolf. Mr. Honda.
Mr. Honda. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And welcome.
Dr. Holdren. Thank you.

NASA FUNDING LEVELS

Mr. Honda. Let me just take a different tack on the funding
of all the programs and the frustration that was expressed
here. We over the past six, seven years have been cutting, and
cutting, and cutting funds in NASA Ames and all those other
projects have been suffering the same consequences. And so we
are asking you, NASA, Ames, to deal with what we give you. And
like you said, the President has to follow the law. So it is
really us in Congress that determine the funding level. If we
keep cutting we are going to have less funds. Less funds, you
are required to cut back on something. And maybe if we had the
exercise of having to cut, and figure out what it is that we
have, what we want to see and what we do not want to see, maybe
that should lay on us.
But we have administrators that look at the NASA budget and
try to produce a budget based upon FTE with no mention or no
connection to mission. And then later on we had another
administrator that went back to the mission and tried to
readjust the budget so that we can look at the mission. But we
put NASA and Ames into a trick box where you are whiplashed
every time a budget comes along. So I just want to put that out
there.
And last year we cut our budget a couple of times. The CR
was an exercise in cutting the funds. So the certainty for
programs to be able to express themselves always to the end has
been frustrating, I think. And as a program manager in the past
when people cut my budget in the same year they gave me the
money, then I have to readjust my programs. I just wanted to
say that.

ADVANCED SEMICONDUCTOR PRODUCTION

Dr. Holdren, this topic I want to bring up, the 450
millimeter transition, the wafer transition that our industry
is going to be looking at. It could be a little bit out of your
jurisdiction or the subcommittee but it is in your purview.
United States companies currently lead the world in
production of semiconductor manufacturing equipment, holding
about 50 percent of the market share. And we manufacture
roughly $18 billion worth of cutting edge tools each year and
86 percent of that is exported. Many of them are located in and
around my Silicon Valley district. The industry faces a major
transition the likes of which occurs only once every ten years.
The transition to a larger 450 millimeter sized wafer will
allow the manufacture of more advanced semiconductor devices at
a lower cost by producing more devices per wafer. Right now it
is 300. Prior to today it was smaller. So every decade it gets
larger.
But to get there the next generation of manufacturing tools
must be developed, which is estimated to cost at least $8
billion for the U.S. companies and as much as $30 billion
globally. Foreign governments see this transition as a prime
opportunity to lure U.S. companies to their shores and their
technology overseas and are proposing China's government, their
government intends for the R&D work to be done there.
That has been the attraction and I think some of us had
mentioned other countries attracting our companies overseas. So
the loss of this industry could pose really a significant
economic and national security threat to our country because
these wafers are chips that we depend upon for our high tech
information technology and our military equipment. And absent
that we could be looking at the possibility of other countries
producing these larger wafers at a cheaper cost and then
producing them for our use. And they would not be what we call
trusted sources.
So do you think that the federal government has a role to
play in ensuring that the next generation of tools is
manufactured in the U.S.? And would a limited duration of
public private partnership funded by the government and
industry to provide support for the basic R&D needed to develop
these tools would be an idea worth exploring?
Dr. Holdren. Well the short answer, Congressman Honda, is
yes. Number one, President Obama has been very clear that he
thinks it has to be a high priority for us to keep these
critical manufacturing industries in the United States rather
than letting them go overseas. And I know that I am not
familiar with the details of this 300 millimeter versus 450
millimeter transition that you mentioned. I am sure some folks
in my technology division are familiar with it and I will go
back and consult with them.
Mr. Honda. Sure. We can have the members of Semi come and
explain that to you. And also looking at how we can fund the
partnership where the industry will put up the money but
looking for a partnership from the government, as we have done
in other, you know, disruptive kinds of technology we have had
in the past.
Dr. Holdren. Yes, indeed. And I would think this would be
one of the domains where some of the manufacturing efforts that
we have underway, including those at NIST, would be relevant.
But I would have to look into the details and perhaps talk with
you and your staff about what is needed.
Mr. Honda. Right. Well this would go a long ways, this
would go a long ways on our mantra that we are saying, we want
jobs, we want to improve the economy, we want to make sure that
manufacturing occurs here. And we can make that happen and also
have the innovations done here with its attendant research and
development of the product here in this country rather than it
happen overseas. I hope that we can work with you on that.
Dr. Holdren. Yeah, I would be happy to work with you on
that, sir.

COOPERATION BETWEEN NSF AND THE DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION

Mr. Honda. Two others is the STEM education. We are happy
about the change in the STEM education set up and that there is
going to be more attention paid to STEM and STEM teacher
preparation. Do you think that as we move forward that the
Department of Education would be worked with and collaborated
with a little bit more than they have in the past? I think that
they should be involved in this.
And also that not only NSF but, you know, the Department of
Education. Because they should be the ones responsible for
making sure all the research that is done in STEM be held
someplace so that it is accessible to the general public or to
the education community. And hopefully that you could look at
that as advice to the President.
Dr. Holdren. Well, we are working very hard, Congressman,
on increasing the amount of coordination and cooperation among
the different agencies in the STEM education field. That is why
we created a standing committee within the National Science and
Technology Council on STEM education. As you know, the NSTC is
the place where we work to coordinate all the science and
technology issues that cross department and agency boundaries.
And I have to say that Secretary Duncan has been energetic,
eager, and cooperative in working with us and the Domestic
Policy Council and NSF as we figure out how to better
rationalize and coordinate our STEM education efforts.

NANOTECHNOLOGY HEALTH AND SAFETY ISSUES

Mr. Honda. Yes. Very quickly, Mr. Chairman, on the
nanotechnology initiative, you mentioned the initiative and the
nanotechnology signature initiatives, because it sounds a
little bit like the provisions in my Nanotech Advancement and
New Opportunities Act, it is H.R. 2749. I would like to ask you
about the environmental health and safety studies you mentioned
including the 2009 National Tech Initiative EHS research
strategies. In talking with folks from the nanotech industry
and with academic researchers in a variety of related fields
including toxicology, I have heard that a top priority of
theirs is the development of characterization tools and
techniques for studying nanomaterials. Does the EHS research
strategy focus at all on the characterization tools and
techniques? And how much funding do you think we should be
dedicating on works like this in fiscal year 2013?
Dr. Holdren. Well, first of all, the environment health and
safety dimension remains an important part of the national
nanotechnology strategy. Characterizing nanomaterials as to
their specific features that could affect environment health
and safety is a very important part of that. We understand that
it is not appropriate simply to say because something is small,
it is dangerous. We really need to look at the specific
characteristics that are responsible for risk. And we are doing
that in the National Nanotechnology Initiative. I think the
budget is there to do it.
Mr. Honda. Great. I think that out of sight, out of mind
does not work here either.
Dr. Holdren. Certainly not.
Mr. Honda. And especially in the area of when we talk about
genetically modified foods, where if we can show people that it
is not a dangerous thing, and we can prove it scientifically,
because we have been doing genetic manipulation since time
immortal when we were messing around with corn pollen. But here
we go right down to the nano level. And we do not know whether
we are taking pieces out of an animal and splicing it into
plants. So these kinds of things we need to be able to explain
very clearly and in English to the general public so that they
have a confidence in what is being produced in agriculture and
in science. So I appreciate that. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Wolf. Mr. Austria.
Mr. Austria. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Director, thank you
for your time this afternoon. I know it is getting warm here,
hot actually in this room.
Dr. Holdren. I noticed.

PRIVATE SECTOR INVOLVEMENT IN COMMERCIAL CREW

Mr. Austria. But I have got a couple of questions I want to
follow up, and I know there has already been a lengthy
discussion on the commercial crew and NASA. But just a
clarification. We talked earlier about it and you mentioned if
a private company drops out and their, I think in your words,
good technology is purchased by a company that is still in. I
guess my question is, can we assume that that purchase will
largely be made with federal funds? Or can you explain that
process?
Dr. Holdren. I would not assume that. But you are way
outside my area of expertise. Again, I am a scientist not a
business person or a manager and so have no real sense. In my
initial response to Chairman Wolf's question about this sort of
consolidation I said I could easily imagine a situation if a
company dropped out and it had good technology, another company
would acquire it. I am not familiar enough with the financial
terms of these agreements to speculate on whether that, whether
the money they would use to do that would include any of the
public funds provided for commercial crew or not.
Mr. Austria. But I think with the difficult budget
constraints that have been mentioned, that is important
considering, you know, much of the research is federally
funded. And how that technology is being passed on from, you
know, a private company, how federal tax dollars are being used
I think is important. And that is the question that I had as
far as how that process takes place.
But let me also, I know because of the current contracting
agreements Congress is unable to, or it is very difficult to
track companies' business models, including the level of
private investment that are being put towards commercial
spaceflight projects. And as has been mentioned the President's
proposal to increase funding, I think double the funding
almost, for the commercial spaceflight program. And in light of
the current fiscal constraints are you able to describe how
that private money--let me ask you this. From a ratio
standpoint, how much private money is being put into the pot
versus federal funds?
Dr. Holdren. I would rather get back to you on that to make
sure I do not give an inaccurate answer off the top of my head.
I will be happy to follow up with you after I consult with
Administrator Bolden and find what the right answer is.
Mr. Austria. All right. Let me jump over then and follow up
with Mr. Honda's question on manufacturing, advanced
manufacturing. I would like it if you could provide the answer
to that, that would be good.
Dr. Holdren. I will do it.
[The information follows:]

NASA currently is not planning to stipulate a pre-determined level
or proportion of cost sharing for private entities vying to develop
operational systems under the Commercial Crew Program--nor has NASA
required a certain proportion of cost sharing for the commercial cargo
or crew technology development efforts that have taken place to date.
Rather NASA has indicated that the most appropriate and beneficial
course is to avoid such a priori standards, instead assessing each
proposal as a whole and on its own merits. This assessment would
include an evaluation of factors such as the system's proposed
capability, development schedule, and cost, as well as business
considerations like the potential to support commercial markets, the
amount of corporate investment, and long-term cost effectiveness. NASA
believes that no single factor is necessarily more important than
another, and that each proposed approach will likely envision unique
solutions for each of the factors used in the evaluation. Regardless,
my understanding is that these proposals will incorporate a combination
of Federal and private sector investment in some form, which is one of
the key benefits of the current approach relative to more traditional
cost-plus contracting methods.

Mr. Austria. Because I think many of our private partners,
you know, many of the taxpayers, the taxpayers need to know
what kind of skin in the game, so to speak, that our private
partners have in this, and how that compares to the federal
dollars, and how they are being leveraged.

NEW APPROACHES TO ADVANCED MANUFACTURING

But moving over to advanced manufacturing, the
administration has made advanced manufacturing a major theme
within the science and technology budget this year, devoting
significant resources to strengthening and modernizing the
manufacturing base in this country. And I understand that
within NSF I believe there is $148 million devoted to advanced
manufacturing through various programs. Can you speak a bit
about this initiative? And specifically any new approaches to
research that you hope to implement with these resources?
Dr. Holdren. Well, the President's budget is asking for
nearly $1 billion for the National Network of Manufacturing
Innovation to establish a network of advanced manufacturing
centers that would provide capabilities and insights and access
to facilities to small and medium sized manufacturers as one of
the major initiatives there.
There are very substantial increases in NIST, as we have
already discussed the National Institute of Standards and
Technology, for their manufacturing programs. The Hollings
Manufacturing Extension Program, MEP, is the one that has $128
million in the budget, but that is not the only investment.
NIST is proposing to initiate a $21 million advanced technology
manufacturing consortia program that would be a public-private
partnership to develop roadmaps for research that would broadly
benefit the Nation's advanced manufacturing effort.
So there are a lot of different ingredients in this
portfolio of advanced manufacturing initiatives. But we think
that these are investments that are well worth making in the
current climate because manufacturing is so important and
because advanced manufacturing has such high potential.
Mr. Austria. And I certainly would appreciate that, and I
would appreciate getting more details. Specifically what the
plan is----
Dr. Holdren. We can provide that to you, sure.
Mr. Austria. And just, and I know it is getting late so I
will end. But I just want to echo what my colleagues have
already expressed to you as far as with NASA and within the
budget, and the change there. The concerns that, just so I am
on the record as well, about those changes and how they
occurred. So with that----
Dr. Holdren. Okay.

TECHNOLOGY TRANSFER AND JOB CREATION

Mr. Fattah. If the gentleman would yield? On your first
question, I have some legislation on this technology transfer
issue. NASA has 17,000 patents. For many of our national labs,
and for a lot of federally funded research, this information is
almost always provided to the private sector at no cost.
Mr. Austria. That is what I was----
Mr. Fattah. That is number one, because the idea has been
to commercialize it. My legislation is not to prohibit that but
to suggest that we tie to licensing agreements that whenever
technology is transferred that has been paid for with federal
taxpayers' dollars, it would require that the jobs to make
those new widgets are created in the United States and not in
places in the world that the chairman spends a lot of time
making sure that we understand are not the places where we want
to see our jobs exported to.
So I am interested in this subject. The administration has
done some work on trying to ID these issues in terms of the
technology. There are two issues. One is, we have great
technology, and we need to make sure our private sector gets
the benefit from it. Second, we need to make sure that we at
least require that the jobs that emanate from that technology
end up benefitting the people who paid the taxes.
Mr. Austria. And I thank the gentleman for clarifying that.
Because that is what I was trying to get at. How this
technology is being passed on. And when you just mentioned that
it is being passed on at no cost, and we are talking about
federal funds involved, and the word purchase that was used
earlier by a company of new technology. I appreciate you
clarifying that, and that is very helpful. And I look forward
to working with you on that. With that, thank you, Director,
and I will yield back, Mr. Chairman. Thank you.
Mr. Wolf. Thank you. I appreciate Mr. Fattah's comments.
And I could not help but thinking of GE. Jeff Immelt, the
President's jobs guy, has created a lot of jobs, to his credit.
But they have all been in China. They have not been here. The
avionics deal that he signed will create jobs in China. And I
think that technology came from the American taxpayer. He just
announced, if you watch the ads, GE has their electronic
imaging, they are all leaving Waukesha, Wisconsin and going to
Beijing. A lot of that came from the American taxpayer. And yet
he is the jobs guy. In 2010, GE paid no taxes. They filed
57,000 pages of electronic tax returns. And yet, we had the
Library of Congress check and we can get this to you, GE was
one of the largest taxpayers in China in 2010.
So I think Mr. Fattah makes a very good point. And I think
American taxpayers and American workers have been taken for a
ride. Jeff Immelt, I mean, to have him as your jobs guy, I do
not see how you can even do it. I just do not see, unless you
meant you wanted to help China create jobs. Then I think he
gets the A.
Dr. Holdren. I think that is not the aim, sir.
Mr. Wolf. I did not think so. I did not think so. But he
has been an abject success for the Chinese and he has been an
abject failure for the American government.

COOPERATION WITH CHINA

At your budget hearing last year, you informed the
Subcommittee that OSTP would not comply with the legislative
prohibition on bilateral coordination with China. GAO
subsequently found that OSTP noncompliance was a violation of
both the prohibition itself and the Antideficiency Act, since
the agency's actions clearly contravened legislation that had
been passed by Congress, signed by the President, and never
declared unconstitutional by any Federal court.
We did slightly modify the language in fiscal year 2012. We
also reduced the budget in that area. Some in the universities
have screamed, but it is kind of interesting. They never
advocate for the Catholic bishops that are in jail, the
Protestant pastors that are in jail, the spying that is being
done against us, and all the activity. But they kind of raised
this objection with regard to the funding.
But the question is, is it your intention to fully comply
with the new China coordination language?
Dr. Holdren. Yes.
Mr. Wolf. Okay, that----
Dr. Holdren. We are complying with the current language.
Mr. Wolf. The new language requires you to certify that any
bilateral activity will not result in the transfer of
technology with national or economic security implications. In
addition, the White House also agreed to certify you will not
interact with individuals known to have engaged in human rights
abuses. What is the process you are using to make these
determinations prior to submitting a certification? And how are
you verifying for yourself that any certification made is
accurate?
Dr. Holdren. Number one, Mr. Chairman, we of course try to
determine who the Chinese are, with whom we will be meeting in
a given interaction. The only interaction on the schedule which
we have in fact reported to you----
Mr. Wolf. Yes.
Dr. Holdren [continuing]. Is the upcoming strategic and
economic dialogue with adjacent meetings of the Joint
Commission on Science and Technology Operation, which I co-
chair with the Chinese Minister of Science and Technology, and
the meeting of the U.S.-China Dialogue on Innovation Policy, in
which we are working to try to roll back discriminatory Chinese
policies and policies where the Chinese are obtaining our
intellectual property illegally and without compensation.
Those, the Chinese interlocutors in those particular
interactions in which I will be participating, namely the Joint
Commission meeting and the Innovation Dialogue, are largely
members of the science, technology, and innovation community in
China. And we check with the State Department as to whether the
State Department has determined that any of these individuals
have been responsible for human rights violations. And when we
have assurance that they have not, we feel free to proceed.
Mr. Wolf. Is that with Mr. Posner's office? Whose office--
--
Dr. Holdren. I would have to check with my Assistant for
International Affairs. But I am sure we are checking with the
appropriate offices at State.
[The information follows:]

OSTP confirms with the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor
at the U.S. Department of State.

Mr. Wolf. As I mentioned in the opening statement, the
Director of the DIA said that China is using its space program
to achieve military goals. In order to achieve those goals more
quickly, they engage in espionage to boost their capabilities.
In 2010, a Chinese agent was found guilty for sending trade
secrets about the Space Shuttle and the Delta IV launch vehicle
back to China for use in their space technology. Were we aware
of that?
Dr. Holdren. I personally am not aware of any of the
details of that particular incident, but it is not a great
surprise. I mean, the Chinese do engage in industrial
espionage. We know that. Sometimes they succeed. We do our best
to prevent it.
Mr. Wolf. Well, we will get you the information on that. So
when you meet with the Chinese science and technology
officials, will you raise these issues with them?
Dr. Holdren. Sure.
Mr. Wolf. Okay.
Dr. Holdren. Absolutely. That is what the innovation policy
dialogue is about, is raising these difficult issues and trying
to get the Chinese to behave better.
Mr. Wolf. And I think by raising it, it will send a very,
very powerful message. Do you have defined security plans in
place to protect the integrity of your electronic devices and
other means of communication prior to your arrival in China for
these meetings? I remember last time you did not. Do you now
have it in place? And has that plan been vetted by our security
experts in other agencies?
Dr. Holdren. Well Mr. Chairman, we were following last time
the guidance of the FBI on this. And we, of course, at your
recommendation, met again with the FBI at FBI headquarters to
discuss these matters. And we will continue to have the FBI's
support and approval of whatever we do with respect to
electronics in China.
Mr. Wolf. And you would not bring a BlackBerry or a laptop?
Dr. Holdren. My expectation on the forthcoming trip is that
I will not be bringing a laptop or a BlackBerry, sir.
Mr. Wolf. Last November, Bloomberg Business Week reported
that when a Beijing organization with close ties to the Chinese
government offered Stanford University $4 million to host a
Confucius Institute on Chinese language and culture and endow a
professorship, it attached one caveat. The professor could not
discuss delicate issues like Tibet. China is expanding its
presence on U.S. campuses, seeking to promote its culture and
history and meet a growing global demand to learn its language.
Hanban, a government affiliated group under the Chinese
education ministry, has spent at least $500 million since 2004
establishing 350 Confucius Institutes worldwide, and about 75
in the U.S., four times the number in any other country.
The article also says that the Chinese pay the way for U.S.
college administrators to attend its annual conferences in
China as well as cultural showcases. More than 300 university
presidents and 2,000 directors and teachers at Confucius
Institutes attended the 2010 Shanghai World Expo at Hanban's
expense, according to its annual report. Are you familiar with
these Confucius Institutes?
Dr. Holdren. I am certainly not familiar in any detail. I
am aware of their existence.
Mr. Wolf. Are you concerned about U.S. research
universities, each of which receive tens of millions of dollars
in Federal science research funding, being censored by Chinese
interests?
Dr. Holdren. I am actually surprised if U.S. research
universities have accepted this stricture on funds for these
institutes on their campuses.
Mr. Wolf. Yeah, I----
Dr. Holdren. I am very surprised by that, if that is in
fact the reality, because ordinarily, U.S. research
universities are very diligent in not accepting infringements
of academic freedom tied to funding they receive.
Mr. Wolf. Well I agree, and I am pleased to hear you say
that. And I was surprised too, before I read the Bloomberg
thing. Do you believe that American universities whose research
is paid for by the Federal government and student tuition
financed by Federal loans, grants, and fellowships should
discontinue these relationships with the Confucius Institutes?
I am not going to take the time, but I would like to hear your
answer.
I remember when I was in Tibet meeting with the Tibetan
monks and nuns. We had a young Buddhist monk with us who could
speak the language. And the torture that they told us about,
and the number of Tibetan monks and nuns that have set
themselves aflame. The first ones set themselves aflame and the
Chinese public security police shot them as they were aflame.
Gunned them down. So, I had a prominent university president
come in and see me three weeks ago, and they were afraid that
if they invited the Dalai Lama to the university that they were
going to be punished.
So I guess the question is, does this trouble you with
regard to these Confucius Institutes and having this as a
policy?
Dr. Holdren. Well I would want to learn more, Mr. Chairman,
about these Confucius Institutes before I offer a blanket
statement about whether U.S. universities should be hosting
them. As I said, I am surprised if U.S. universities have
accepted restraints on the academic freedom of the
participants.
Mr. Wolf. Well we will get you the information. Now I
understand why some of these groups have been screaming about
this little language that we have. They want to just be very
close to the Chinese government. And again, this is not the
policy of this committee. I understand. It may just be me
alone. But there is genocide now taking place in the Nuba
Mountains and it is aided and abetted by the Chinese
government. And Bashir, who is an indicted war criminal, was
given a red carpet welcome by Hu Jintao, who was given a red
carpet welcome at the White House. I think this is important.
And I think university ought to understand its intellectual
freedom.
And I want to say one other thing before we get to the next
section. Every time the Chinese dissidents come to the country,
they come into my office. The Chinese people are wonderful
people. Our concern is with the security police and that
handful at the top. So we will get you the information, and if
you can get back to me on it, I would appreciate it.
Before we go to the next thing, I saw Mr. Yoder walk in.

PUBLIC ACCESS TO FEDERALLY FUNDED RESEARCH

Mr. Yoder. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Just briefly, I
appreciate you being here today, doctor, and I appreciate your
testimony. I am cosponsoring a bill that deals with federal
research done by public universities. It is H.R. 4004. And I
just wanted to see if the administration has any thoughts on
it, or you might get back to us on where the administration
would be. It essentially says that any research done as a
result of federal dollars, federal grants, that are done by our
public institutions that perform research has to be publicly
available within one year after the research is conducted.
The concept is the taxpayers have paid for the research in
the first place and then we then use Federal and State dollars
to then pay for the research over and over and over again at
our various universities. This legislation has been partially
enacted, NIH currently does it that way. My alma mater,
University of Kansas, has this requirement as well. This would
create a national standard for all research that was federally
funded, 123 university college presidents and provosts from 36
states support it. Obviously library associations. So it is
just public access to research. And I did not know if you had
heard of that legislation, and it has been introduced in the
past, and whether you have thoughts on that.
Dr. Holdren. I am not familiar with the details of that
specific legislation. This is an area that OSTP has been very
interested in, the whole question of public access to the
results of federally funded research. The America COMPETES
Reauthorization Act requires OSTP to coordinate with agencies
to develop policies that ensure widespread public access and
long term stewardship of results from federally funded
research. We have actually two interagency policy groups under
the National Science and Technology Council that are addressing
this issue. One of them is the Task Force on Public Access to
Scholarly Publications and the other is the Interagency Working
Group on Digital Data.
I would be very interested to look at the details of your
legislation. But it sounds very much like it is pursuing the
same goals and running along the same lines as what we have
been trying to do in OSTP.
Mr. Yoder. Well, I would certainly be interested in
feedback from the committees that are reviewing this and we
want to do it in conjunction with what is in the best interest
for everyone. And it looks like something that would be very
promising.
Dr. Holdren. Yeah, we definitely want to work with you on
that.
Mr. Yoder. We will look forward to trying to work with you
on that.
Dr. Holdren. Good.
Mr. Yoder. Good. That is all I have, Mr. Chairman, thank
you.
Mr. Fattah. Can I just mention one thing on that? And we
can talk about it. It relates to one of the issues that the
chairman and I have talked about. You are absolutely correct,
with one caveat related to advanced manufacturing and national
security, and whether it could give information to our economic
competitors that would be better for us to take advantage of.
The Chinese now have almost a monopoly on the rare Earth
materials. We are doing a lot of work through the
administration on creating new materials and composite
materials and so on. So making all of that information public
really allows our economic competitors in many respects not to
make similar investments and just use ours. So I know that is
not the innovation you are referring to. I just wanted to make
that point.
Mr. Yoder. Sure. I appreciate the gentleman's thoughts on
that. And certainly that is not the direction we are going. We
are dealing with the items that are published in journals that
essentially in university after university are being paid for
again and again and again, and there is not the access. So it
is certainly not classified information or information that
would not already be published. My assumption is that if China
wanted some of this information and it was published in a
journal they could probably fork over the couple of hundred
bucks to get that information already. But it is a caveat to be
aware of that we do not overreach, that we do not overreach in
the legislation. Thanks.

INCREASING OPPORTUNITIES FOR MANUFACTURING JOBS

Mr. Wolf. I am going to have a couple of questions on
manufacturing, then we will go to Mr. Fattah. Did you see the
series in the New York Times about Apple? Where the President
turns to Steve Jobs and says, ``Mr. Jobs, how can you bring the
jobs back?'' And he says, ``You cannot.'' We are having a
hearing. What day are we having the hearing? March 28th. We are
having Niall Ferguson and NIST and NSF to discuss manufacturing
jobs. But what proposals are in the fiscal year 2013 R&D budget
that will persuade Apple and other high tech companies that the
U.S. can not only be a viable but a desirable place to
manufacture their products? I do not know if you were there for
that conversation, were you?
Dr. Holdren. I was not there.
Mr. Wolf. Okay. Then how can we prove Steve Jobs wrong? He
said, ``Mr. President those jobs are not coming back.'' What do
we have to do? China, iPhone, China, iPod, you listen to your
records now, everything is from China. I appreciate Mr. Fattah
being so interested in this. And you have already got your team
together. We met with NSF and NIST to see how we can cooperate
together to really bring those jobs back. So do you have any
thoughts of what we can do? You are an important person in this
because they all answer up to you. How can we bring those jobs
back?
And then if you saw the article that came a week later at
that facility in Foxconn. I mean, the suicide rate was
unbelievable. They were working 12 hours a day. They were
living the life of, not of Riley, but of almost an inmate. We
do not do those things. So how can we, using the great minds of
yours and others, and NIST, and NSF, bring those jobs back?
Dr. Holdren. Well, Mr. Chairman, I think a lot of the
things that we are proposing to do under the domain of advanced
manufacturing are germane to this. We need to develop the
processes and the techniques that will make us leaders in
manufacturing to have the jobs here. We have never, or at least
not for a long time, been able to compete on the price of
labor, and we do not want to. We want to compete on innovative
technologies and processes.
Mr. Wolf [continuing]. They are having riots, I believe, in
certain cities where they are having a difficult time.
Dr. Holdren. Well that situation may change in China, and
that would be to the better.
Mr. Wolf. Right.
Dr. Holdren. I mean, I have said before, Mr. Chairman, I am
an admirer of your leadership on human rights issues. I am not
a supporter of China's practices on human rights. And if those
efforts and those initiatives of you and others who are
basically advocating for more responsible human rights policies
in China, which would include labor practices, ultimately some
of those ``advantages'' which enable them to produce things so
cheaply there by abusing labor will be ended. But on our side
there, is a lot that we can do that we control directly,
including incentives from manufacturers. It is not all in the
R&D budget. Some of it is going to be in the tax budget and the
expenditures that we make implicitly by providing tax
incentives for manufacturers to stay here. And there is, I
believe, a good deal of that in the President's budget as well,
but it is not my domain.
Mr. Wolf. Are you aware of the hearing we are having?
Dr. Holdren. Well, I am now. I am tempted to come.
Mr. Wolf. Well you are welcome to come. We would like----
Dr. Holdren. It ought to be a great discussion.
Mr. Wolf. Yeah. But the purpose is to bring it down to
reality, how can we bring those jobs back?
Dr. Holdren. Absolutely.
Mr. Wolf. Because they are not making baseball caps. They
are making things that are really important. So you are
welcome. We will officially invite you to come.
Dr. Holdren. The administration absolutely shares that
priority.
Mr. Wolf. Oh, I know you do.
Dr. Holdren. And we want to get this done.
Mr. Wolf. I guess Mr. Fattah, do you want to?
Mr. Fattah. Just one quick last thing and I will turn it
back to the chairman. With the chairman's support and in fact
his leadership, a number of items were put into the bill last
year that will come to fruition. One is around technology
access for small manufacturers. Another was around cost benefit
analysis that can be done for companies who want to move, or
want to look at moving, jobs back to the United States. And the
MEP, which has been my number one priority, has been a very
important factor in terms of helping small manufacturers on the
ground.
But when you talk about the administration's focus on large
manufacturers it is very good news. I was out at the Boeing
plant outside of Philadelphia, and three years ago they had
2,000 people working, and they now have triple shifts, weekend
shifts. They have used technology that enables them to put
these Chinook helicopters together more quickly and have
literally added more jobs with the technology, which is not the
usual correlation between technology in the plant and jobs.
So there is a lot that can be done. The advanced
manufacturing, the nanotech stuff that is being done is very
important. The committee is very interested in helping the
administration on this manufacturing front. And in the Commerce
section we funded a program called the National Innovation
Marketplace, which is now literally locking in manufacturers to
federal opportunities. And it is working very, very well. So
there are a lot of different pieces to this.
Obviously the administration is focused on kind of the
large end manufacturers. But, we have tens of thousands of very
small manufacturers, 500 jobs or below, that are critically
important to us, to our positioning relative to our
manufacturing base. So I know some of the economists, some of
the opinion shapers, want to say that you are off on a wild
goose chase in this manufacturing. And I do not agree. The
chairman does not agree.
Dr. Holdren. And we do not agree.
Mr. Fattah. We think that it is an appropriate focus that
part of our economic prosperity long term has got to be to hold
on to the manufacturing jobs we have, and to increase and
retain as we go forward, both large and small. So thank you for
the work that you are doing on this. And Mr. Chairman, I am
concluded.
Mr. Wolf. Is that the helicopter place where the railroad
track is?
Mr. Fattah. Absolutely. Right in your neighborhood. Let me
bore you with one other story.
Mr. Wolf. I applied for a job there to work in the Xerox
department, then they called it Xerox, to copy blueprints there
back in----
Mr. Fattah. Let me bore you with one other story. There is
a little company over there in southwest called Cover Sports.
They have been there 80 years. They make tarps for the baseball
teams, the Washington Nationals, the Phillies. They are right
on Woodland Avenue, around 54th Street. And they have 80
employees there, and they just bought a new piece of equipment
from a company out in Ohio with some federal help that is
actually allowing them to compete with the only company in the
world they compete with, which is in China. So. All right,
thank you.

JOINT POLAR SATELLITE SYSTEM

Mr. Wolf. Thank you. Joint Polar Satellite System. The
President's budget puts forward yet another new proposal on the
JPSS polar orbiting satellite. When the first contracts were
awarded for NPOESS a decade ago, the cost was to be $7 billion
and the first satellite was to have flown in 2008. But the
current baseline cost is $11.9 billion. I understand that
recent independent cost estimates increase the price tag to as
much as $16.1 billion for a reduced set of capabilities and an
estimated first launch in 2017. In response, you have put
together a new proposal in the fiscal year 2013 budget to lower
the life cycle cost. Can you describe the new plan, its
estimated cost, and its capabilities?
Dr. Holdren. Okay. First of all, Mr. Chairman, as you know,
we inherited a mess in NPOESS. And I was instructed by the
President to fix it. The reason that is my responsibility is it
is an interagency effort that involves NOAA, NASA, and DOD. It
proved a great challenge to bring those agencies together in a
manner that ultimately yielded a solution. We think we have it.
The current plan puts a large part of the responsibility in
NOAA, which has required providing NOAA with the money to do
that. We have a program management structure that provides
alignment with JPSS acquisition with the NASA Goddard Space
Flight Center, strong program management and oversight, a cap
on the life cycle costs. And we have got NOAA and NASA working
closely together, and the DOD part basically separated off
except for the ground support which remains joint. And we are
committed to getting this right. But it has been a huge
challenge, I have to say. And as you know it is crucial because
these polar orbiting satellites provide indispensable both for
weather forecasting, storm tracking, and for climate
monitoring. And we have got to get it right.
Mr. Wolf. If the other capabilities were here, where will
this be? Are there going to be gaps? Or is this going to be
just as good----
Dr. Holdren. Well I think we are going to end up having to
fly some instruments that initially we thought would fit on a
single platform as free fliers on additional satellites. I
mean, there have been complications with the development of the
instruments, for example. I mean, the trouble is, like rocket
science, this is a very complicated business. And obviously
people sometimes estimate that something can be done within a
given budget or within a given size, a given weight to fit on a
given platform, and it does not work out that way. And we have
had a lot of challenges----
Mr. Wolf [continuing]. Comparable or----
Dr. Holdren. Yeah, I think we are going to get close. There
are some instruments that are still problematic and are not
going to be able to fly on the JPSS birds that are currently
programmed, that provide information that we really would like
to have. But the most crucial instruments will fly. But it is
now quite likely that there will be a gap in some of this
coverage and that the existing satellites that we have up there
will expire before the new ones are in place. And that is going
to be very unfortunate.

DISSEMINATION OF STEM EDUCATION RESEARCH

Mr. Wolf. OK. I am going to ask some STEM questions, and
then let you finish. I appreciate the good work that Dr. Wieman
and Dr. Suresh did to review all Federal STEM education
programs and put together their report. I was struck by the
breadth of the STEM programs the government currently has. But
I am concerned that there is not enough being done to put some
of these materials in the hands of the teachers and the
students. Is there not, or should there not, be a one stop shop
for teachers to access federally developed curricula on STEM
topics? Does the Federal government have a formal mechanism for
distributing STEM education materials developed by Federal
agencies to schools and science teachers around the country? We
did an event with NSF, and they had a roll out, but I talked to
teachers and they do not know about it. I talk to school
districts and they do not know about it. I wrote governors, and
they did not seem to know anything about it. So is there a one
stop place that, if I were a science teacher, I could find out
what is the latest that I could go to? Then I could approach my
administration and see if they would permit it. Or should there
not be a one stop place?
Dr. Holdren. The last question is the easiest to answer.
There should be a one stop place. And given the focus of
providing better access to government data and insights through
the open.gov program that we have had, and has had many
successes, we ought to be able to get this right as well. I
know there is an effort that Dr. Wieman has been leading in the
NSTC to understand the full range of programs that are out
there, and what they are all doing, and which ones are working
and which ones are not. And there will be a strategic plan
forthcoming shortly. And my hope is that it will include
recommendations for improving access to all of the results of
the Federal work in STEM education. To my knowledge, there is
not now a comprehensive one stop place. There are----
Mr. Wolf. Who would put that together? Who would, if you
all did it, who would put it together? Where would they go? Do
you think it should be----
Dr. Holdren. Well it might be at NSF. It might be at the
Department of Education. Again, I do not want to preempt the
recommendations of that study group which I have not been part
of.
Mr. Wolf. They have all done good work. And now the real
danger is, you know, at the end of this administration it just,
it is sort of there. Is there going to be a way to tie it
together so that every congressman can do a newsletter? I can
write to the Secretary of Education in Governor McDonnell's
administration and say every school district should know this.
I think there has to be. Because the real danger is, you know,
it is out there and doesn't get used.
And another question you can answer, and you can add it
together, Dr. Wieman, the STEM education expert, has told me
that the research community and Federal education agencies have
learned some key STEM education findings and methods that do
not appear to be widely known or practiced in the field. The
question is, and maybe he should answer for the record, or you
can answer now, what are the three or four most important of
these findings and methods that have not made their way into
the state and local systems? And what are you doing to get this
out? Are you going to do a conference? I do not know how the
educational system works. Are you going to do something to get
these three and four things that you all have done distributed?
I mean, I think you have done a good job. So now, it says in
the Bible do not hide your light under a bushel basket. Let
people see. How are you going to let them see and get it out to
people so that they can access it and do something about it?
Dr. Holdren. Well first of all, two points. On the access
of the wider teaching community to the advances that have been
developed through Federal work on improving STEM education, the
strategic plan, which will be out shortly, we will be making
recommendations on access to this information and to best
practices. Whether they will recommend a one stop shop, I do
not know. I have not seen the draft report. I do not know
exactly what they are going to recommend. But I have been
assured that there will be recommendations on how we can
improve access in the wider community to this information.
Second point----
Mr. Wolf. Do you know the three or four things that he
said?
Dr. Holdren. Yes. In fact, the basic insight that Dr.
Wieman and his colleagues have developed relates to the value
of inquiry-based approaches that are not simply lectures. But
which engage classes in answering questions in a sequential and
a structured way. And there has been a large body of research
in cognitive science, including some in neuroscience, about how
people learn that has helped establish why these alternative
approaches work better. Dr. Wieman and some colleagues
published an article in the journal Science, a major article,
about these findings and about the methods. I will be happy to
send it to you, which describes them in detail. But we have a
number of plans in the oven, that I hope will be fully baked
soon, on how to advance the propagation of these enormously
more effective techniques for college teaching of science and
math but they probably ultimately will propagate downward in
the grades as well.
So I think this is an area of enormous potential. And we
will get Dr. Wieman's article right over to you, which
describes it in some detail.
[The information follows:]

A copy of the article was provided to the Subcommittee on March 2,
2012, but for copyright reasons cannot be reproduced here.

Mr. Wolf [continuing]. Directing that Dr. Wieman's
information and the work that he has done----
Dr. Holdren. I think we will have some ideas for you very
soon about that.
Mr. Wolf. I have a number of other questions, but I am not
going to keep everybody. We will go to Mr. Culberson, and then
Mr. Fattah. Then I think what we will do, we are going to vote
fairly soon, we will just submit for the record, unless there
is something that you have been thinking that if you do not
find out tonight that your evening will be wasted--thank you.
Mr. Culberson. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The National
Science Foundation Director when he was before this Committee
last year, said they were searching around for the ideal model
for a science and technology school. And you really do not have
to go any farther than Fairfax County. Tom Davis and Frank Wolf
spearheaded an effort to create what has turned out to be the--
--
Mr. Wolf. Well a lot of other people----
Mr. Culberson. But you and Tom Davis were key in that deal.
Mr. Wolf. A lot of--no. A lot of people out there did it.
Mr. Culberson. Thomas Jefferson.
Mr. Wolf. The point is, people did it----
Dr. Holdren. Thomas Jefferson, yeah. And we would love to
replicate that all over the place.
Mr. Wolf. Have you been out there?
Dr. Holdren. I have not, but I really want to go. I was
actually invited to give a commencement address there the year
before last. And I had an irreconcilable conflict, I was not
able to do it.
Mr. Wolf. They would, and I am going to give you----
Dr. Holdren. Sure, because I would love to go out there.
No, I would love to go out there. And I have heard so much
about it.
Mr. Culberson. Why do you not let me host him? I mean, I
have got the----
Mr. Wolf. He can, he is the big man on campus. He can, his
daughter attends.
Dr. Holdren. I know that from a conversation we had after a
previous hearing, and that is great. And I would love to, I
would love to get out there.
Mr. Wolf [continuing]. If you could do that?
Mr. Culberson. Absolutely. It would be my pleasure to help
host----
Dr. Holdren. No, I would love to do that.
Mr. Culberson [continuing]. Set that up for them to host
you, Dr. Holdren. Seriously.
Dr. Holdren. No, I am serious.
Mr. Culberson. It would be a nice way for us to get to know
each other a little better.
Dr. Holdren. Yep. No, I would love to go.
Mr. Culberson. Because next to my family my highest
priority in life is being a good father and a good husband, and
then this job takes care of itself. Truly. I do operate that
way. But my, really my greatest passion here is the sciences.
And knowing that if we do not make those investments the future
of the country is bleak.
Dr. Holdren. We are in complete agreement about that.
Mr. Culberson. I would be delighted to help put that
together.
Dr. Holdren. I would love to do that.
Mr. Culberson. And there is frankly no better way for
people to get to know each other than through their kids. I
would be delighted. And it really is something I care a great
deal about, and all the investments in the sciences.

SUPERCOMPUTING

I wanted to ask specifically about if I could, and thank
you for the extra time, Mr. Chairman, because I know this is
something of interest to you, and to Mr. Fattah, and the
subcommittee, is supercomputing. And one of my favorite
subscriptions that I enjoy, I am behind in catching up to them,
is the journal Science. But I did see this. This is January 27,
I just got through this one. And I have got it on my iPad 2,
which of course was made in China. On Robert's actually, I am
still using an iPad 1.
But the January 27 issue talks about, there is an article
in here about the move to exascale computing, which is
obviously the next big leap. And they point out that the 2012
spending bill that we approved has money in the Department of
Energy budget, certainly we here in this subcommittee, Mr.
Chairman and Mr. Fattah, want to make sure that whatever we can
do through the National Science Foundation and NIST, that the
United States is the one that builds the world's first exascale
computer. But the Department of Energy's budget contained in
the 2012 spending bill, Mr. Chairman, $1.06 billion for DOE's
program in advanced computing. Quoting from the article,
``which includes a downpayment to bring online the world's
first exascale computer. Congress did not specify exactly how
much money would be spent on the exascale initiative for which
DOE had requested $126 million. But it asked for a detailed
plan which is due next month.''
And I know this is in your bailiwick, Dr. Holdren. So I
hope, I want to bring this to your attention. And if you could
help the subcommittee understand what we need to do in this
subcommittee, on the Appropriations Committee, and in Congress
to make sure that the United States does build the world's
first exascale computer. Because as the article points out the
threat is very real, quoting from the article, ``Japan and
China have built and operate the three most powerful
supercomputers in the world.'' And it is very distressing, but
the Chinese have the fastest machine, according to this
article, which shows that they are, the Japanese have a machine
that runs at 11.3 petaflops. They have got two machines. The
Chinese have five petaflop machines and the United States has
six. It is just unacceptable. And they are rapidly overtaking
us.
I was struck also, Mr. Chairman and Mr. Fattah, that by the
year 2015, in a briefing I got from the Commander of the
Pacific Fleet, by 2015 the Chinese will be able to implement
their own Monroe Doctrine for the South China Sea. They will be
able to exclude anyone else in the planet. They will be able to
blockade the Moroccan Straits. They will be able to just
dominate the ocean in that part of the world. They are rapidly
advancing on all fronts. Stealing us blind. Intellectual
property is being stolen so rapidly that I discovered in
Aviation Week and Space Technology an article I shared with the
chairman, that the reason, the principal reason the F-35
program has been so expensive, and has been so delayed, is that
as fast as our guys develop a new piece of technology and have
a meeting over the computer, over the internet to say, ``Look,
here is our hottest new piece of stealth technology for the F-
35,'' Chinese hackers have logged onto the meeting and are
watching it and stealing it as fast as we put it up and show
it. So we have got to then develop a new piece of technology.
This is extraordinarily important. Could you, and it
reinforces also the anecdotal evidence about the F-35 program,
Dr. Holdren, about why the chairman is so properly concerned
about any collaboration of any kind with the Chinese. Mr.
Chairman, the chairman of the Intelligence Committee said there
is only two types of companies in America. Those who know they
have been hacked by the Chinese, and those that do not know
they have been hacked by the Chinese, because they have all
been hacked by the Chinese. Could you ask, could you talk to us
a little bit about what your office is doing, what the White
House recommends on investing in the next generation of
computers, and in particular to make sure the United States is
the one that builds the world's first exascale computer?
Dr. Holdren. Yeah, happy to talk about that, Congressman.
The basic budget for DOE's advanced scientific computing
research program, which has the exascale computing effort
within it, is in the President's 2013 budget proposal at $456
million. That is up 3.3 percent over 2012 enacted. Within that
research portfolio there is in the 2013 budget money to fund
research and evaluations prototypes on the technologies that
are going to be crucial for exascale computing.
For the benefit of those not familiar entirely with the
technology, petaflops are 1015 flop per second,
floating point operations per second. And exascale is
1018. So it is another factor of a thousand
increase. My understanding is that we will take over, the
United States will take over the number one position in the
world again sometime this year when a new computer that is
under development by IBM comes online.
Mr. Culberson. It is faster than the Japanese----
Dr. Holdren. It is faster than the Japanese computer. But
obviously we are in a competition with the Japanese and with
the Chinese for the leadership in this domain. This is
something that we ought to win and we need to make the
investments, and the President's budget proposes that we do
that.
Mr. Culberson. What have you recommended to NSF or NIST to
this subcommittee on supercomputing?
Dr. Holdren. Well, I think the nexus of our exascale
computing effort is in DOE at this point. I am sure that there
is work going on at NIST in the advanced manufacturing heading
and at NSF in some of the basic research that they do that
ultimately will be germane to future generations of computers.
But the actual task of embodying what we know in computers that
will be the fastest in the world is located in the DOE's Office
of Science. And I am not aware of any reason that we should
change that. Obviously we should continue to support the
research and NIST and the research at NSF that provides the
underpinning, the basic research advances that give us the
potential to move further ahead in this very important applied
domain.
But my concern, very frankly, is the same as yours. That we
must continue to make the investments both in basic research
and in applied research and development to seize and maintain
the lead in these crucial technologies. I mean, the biggest
worry I have is not merely that the Chinese are stealing our
intellectual property now. I worry that if we do not make the
investments in R&D, 20 years from now we may not have any
intellectual property that the Chinese find worth stealing.
That would be an even bigger problem. We need, basically, to
keep the edge in innovation that we have always had and use it
to embody new technology in products, in processes, in jobs,
and faster computers, in order to maintain our place in the
world, our prosperity, and our security.
Mr. Culberson. Well the second critical piece of that is
the future generations of scientists, engineers, and
physicists, and mathematicians that will fill those slots. And
I look forward to taking you up to Thomas Jefferson and
introduce you to a lot of them, and to see how we can replicate
that model nationwide.
Dr. Holdren. I look forward to that as well.
Mr. Wolf. Well thank you very much, and the hearing will be
adjourned.
Dr. Holdren. Thank you.

Wednesday, March 21, 2012.

NATIONAL AERONAUTICS AND SPACE ADMINISTRATION

WITNESS

CHARLES F. BOLDEN, JR., ADMINISTRATOR, NATIONAL AERONAUTICS AND SPACE
ADMINISTRATION

Chairman's Opening Remarks

Mr. Wolf. Good morning, Mr. Administrator. We welcome you
to the hearing today on the fiscal year 2013 budget request for
the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.
Our witness is NASA Administrator Charles Bolden, and we
want to thank you again for being here.
NASA's budget request for fiscal year 2013 totals $17.8
billion and is essentially flat from fiscal year 2012. That
relatively flat total, however, masks a number of significant
reallocations of funding within the agency.
If we look at the substance of these funding shifts as an
expression of your programmatic priorities, it would appear
that you are placing the most emphasis on commercial crew,
space technology, and the James Webb Space Telescope, while de-
emphasizing your work in planetary science, aeronautics,
exploration, and education. Allocating scarce resources in a
time of fiscal constraint is a complicated and subjective task,
which is why I requested in last year's bill an outside look at
the balance between NASA's missions and the feasibility of its
goals. We don't have the results of that review to inform our
discussion today, but I am sure that other members already have
thoughts about your proposal for where we should be focusing
our investments.
In addition to discussing budgetary priorities, I would
also like to use this hearing as an opportunity to check in
with you on some important policy issues, including the
question of interaction or cooperation between NASA and China.
The administration is in favor of closer ties in areas of space
science and exploration; as you know, I strongly disagree.
China, an economic competitor who has been proven to steal from
us, doesn't need or deserve our help to improve their own
capabilities, and I hope the administration comes to realize
this soon.
We will ask you to give a summary of your written
testimony. Then we will proceed with questions.
Before that, I turn to Mr. Fattah for any opening comments.

Ranking Member's Opening Remarks

Mr. Fattah. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Let me welcome the Administrator of NASA again to our
committee. I look forward to your testimony, and I think that
you have provided since your appointment in 2009 extraordinary
leadership for NASA over some very challenging times as the
recasting of a mission into deep space under President Obama's
leadership in the advent of commercial crew, along with the
reality of thinking about how we deal with the International
Space Station and the changes there.
So I think that the Chairman is correct that, obviously,
within the budget framework of the $17 billion, you have to
deal with a number of different priorities. I know that the
Administration has a set of goals that you are trying to
accomplish. Obviously, we want to see how the appropriations
process fits in and where there may be a shared consensus about
the direction of space exploration. It is critically important,
however, that we understand your priorities and your needs as
you go forward, and I welcome you and your testimony today.
I thank the Chairman for holding this very important
hearing.
Mr. Wolf. Thank you, Mr. Fattah.
Mr. Administrator, you may proceed.

Administrator Bolden's Opening Remarks

Mr. Bolden. Chairman Wolf, Ranking Member Fattah, today it
is my privilege to discuss the President's fiscal year 2013
budget request for NASA. All of us at NASA are very grateful to
the Congress and to this subcommittee for the strong level of
support we continue to receive.
Our requested budget, as you mentioned, Mr. Chairman, is
$17.7 billion, which will enable NASA to continue to execute
the bipartisan space exploration plan agreed to by the
President and the Congress in 2010.
Despite the constrained fiscal environment facing the
Nation, this request supports an ambitious civil space program
that puts us on a path to achieving a truly exciting set of
goals--to send humans to an asteroid and ultimately to Mars,
and to broaden human activity in low-Earth orbit.
The International Space Station (ISS) assembly is now
complete, allowing us to focus on full utilization of the
Station's research capabilities. NASA is operating a fleet of
spacecraft to investigate Earth, the solar system, and the
universe. All of this is critical to ensure America's continued
leadership in space exploration as well as our stewardship of
Earth. The fiscal year 2013 request supports the implementation
of key priorities for NASA agreed upon by the President and
congressional leadership.
First, American astronauts continue to live and work in
space aboard the International Space Station, conducting
research to benefit life here on Earth and prepare us for deep
space human exploration. NASA is committed to making this
national resource available to the broader scientific and
commercial research communities.
We are also committed to ensuring that American companies,
launching from U.S. soil, transport our astronauts and their
cargo to the Space Station. This year, we will see the first
commercial flights to the ISS, and with Congressional approval
of the funding request, we are on track to have American
companies transporting our astronauts to Station by 2017.
Second, NASA is on track to develop a flexible, deep space
launch system that will ultimately be the most capable in
history. The Space Launch System, or SLS, heavy-lift rocket,
and the Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle Orion will carry American
astronauts beyond low-Earth orbit and into deep space within
the next decade. We are pushing forward with contracting and
design efforts to advance this critical next-generation space
exploration system. The fiscal year 2013 budget request
supports our plans for an uncrewed SLS flight in 2017 and a
crewed test mission by 2021. A robust technology development
program will be key to the success of our synergized robotic
and human exploration.
Third, we propose to continue progress toward the launch of
the world's most advanced telescope in 2018. The James Webb
Space Telescope (JWST) will operate deep in space to orbit the
Sun and look out into space from its vantage point nearly 1
million miles from Earth. Over the past year, NASA has made
important adjustments to JWST management and put the project on
a sound financial footing. NASA is confident that the fiscal
year 2013 request supports a 2018 launch of JWST.
NASA's budget request supports a portfolio of innovative
science missions, resulting in a stream of data from orbits
around the Sun, Mercury, the Moon, the asteroid Vesta, Mars,
and Saturn. We now have missions on the way to Jupiter, Pluto,
and Mars. Sixteen Earth science missions, currently in orbit,
study Earth as an integrated system.
The Hubble, Spitzer, Chandra and Fermi Space Telescopes
continue to make groundbreaking discoveries on an almost daily
basis. Last year, the MESSENGER spacecraft entered orbit around
Mercury. The Ebb and Flow satellites began mapping the gravity
field of the Moon; and Juno, launched last August, is on its
way to Jupiter. However, tough choices had to be made, so we
will not be moving forward with the planned 2016 and 2018
ExoMars missions we had been planning with the European Space
Agency.
Instead, NASA is developing a new integrated strategy for a
sequence of strategically selected missions that increase
scientific knowledge, advance key technologies, and inform and
enable human exploration goals. Our plan, including the
framework for a mission to take advantage of the 2018-2020
launch opportunity, is targeted for completion, hopefully, in
time to support the fiscal year 2013 appropriations process.
The fiscal year 2013 request supports this approach, and it
will be informed by extensive coordination with the science
community and our international partners and, of course, this
Congress.
The fiscal year 2013 budget request continues to support
robust Mars exploration including two spacecraft currently
orbiting Mars; the Opportunity rover on the surface; a multi-
year exploration of Mars by the Mars Science Laboratory
Curiosity; and the planned 2013 MAVEN mission to explore the
Mars upper atmosphere.
The fiscal year 2013 budget request supports continued
advances in new aviation, science, and space technologies,
absolutely essential to enable NASA to achieve its ambitious
goals. At the same time, NASA technology research seeds
innovation, supports economic vitality, and helps to create new
jobs and expand opportunities for a skilled workforce.
With the 2013 request, NASA will conduct aeronautics
research to enable realization of the nation's Next-Generation
Air Transportation System, or NextGen, and the safer, more fuel
efficient, quieter, and environmentally responsible aircraft
that will operate within NextGen.
To inspire the next generation of scientists and explorers
and to foster the development of the U.S. workforce, NASA's
education programs will focus on demonstrable results and
capitalize on the Agency's ability to engage students and
educators. To help today's young people envision their future
in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) is
our goal.
NASA is grateful for the American people and you, their
representatives here on the subcommittee for your continued
support in these difficult and challenging times.
Mr. Chairman, I thank you very much, and I look forward to
your questions.
[The information follows:]

PLANETARY SCIENCE PROGRAM

Mr. Wolf. I thank you, Mr. Administrator.
I understand that the budget pressures required you to make
cuts to your science programs, but I don't understand why those
cuts are overwhelmingly in planetary science. Is planetary
science the lowest priority within the directorate? Are there
no other activities within Earth science, astrophysics, or
heliophysics that could have been reduced to lessen the impact
on planetary science?
Mr. Bolden. We took a look at the portfolio. The area that
seemed to actually be in the best shape was our Mars
exploration, contrary to popular belief. As I mentioned in my
opening statement, we have a rover that is currently operating,
continuing to provide data; two orbiting satellites that
continue to pump data back to us on Mars and help us frame the
strategic selection of future missions that will be affordable.
We have the Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity, that is en
route to Mars, scheduled to land on the fifth of August. It
will be the largest, most advanced rover ever to be put on any
other planet; and it will then begin the return of information
that dwarfs anything that we have ever received before. It will
actually have a drill that will be coring and getting data from
the Mars surface. It will have high-definition 3D cameras,
color cameras that will be bringing back images.
And then we have MAVEN which is going to be looking at
Mars' upper atmosphere, which is critical to our understanding
of the atmosphere as we continue to try to send larger and
larger vehicles to the planet, such as a human mission.
Mr. Wolf. The planetary science decadal survey says that
any future Mars activity must contribute to the goal of sample
return, which is the only way to make further fundamental
advances in Mars science. Can your smaller, refocused mission
contribute in a meaningful way to sample return? And, if not,
how will it be consistent with the decadal survey findings?
Mr. Bolden. Mr. Chairman, our belief is the smaller,
focused missions will help us to better determine the landing
site that you want for a sample return.
Right now, MSL is going to land in the crater that was
chosen because we think it is the most likely place where we
will find water. Most of my planetary scientists tell us when
we are talking about Mars that we want to follow the water.
This will be our first effort to go to a place that we
absolutely know or we are very confident we will get the best
chance of finding out if there was ever life there or if there
is life on Mars.
So we actually believe by bringing about a consistent
pattern of less expensive, more focused flights, we will be
better prepared to set up a Mars sample return.
My position has been and continues to be that, while we
don't have the resources for a sample return mission now nor
have we had them in any of the budgets that I have submitted,
everything that we do will not preclude a future Mars sample
return mission when the resources are available.

JAMES WEBB SPACE TELESCOPE

Mr. Wolf. Last year, we had to cut $156 million out of
NASA's science and management budget to keep the James Webb
Space Telescope on track for the 2018 launch date. This year,
NASA has proposed an additional $99 million in science cuts to
keep pace with the Webb replan. Now that we have seen two years
worth of Webb impact on the results of your science portfolio,
do you still believe that replanning and continuing the program
was the right decision?
Mr. Bolden. Yes, sir, I absolutely do. The Hubble Space
Telescope changed our entire outlook on the universe. It has
provided us data. It helps us to rewrite textbooks every day,
and James Webb will dwarf that. We expect that the return from
the James Webb Space Telescope will be anywhere from 50 to 100
times as good as the Hubble Space Telescope. So not only as a
national initiative but as an international mission, it is
critical for our further understanding of the universe; and I
think the investment is well worth the time.
I will comment that we could have taken cuts from the
science budget and other parts of NASA's budget to bring James
Webb to the capability of flying, say, in 2014, but that did
not seem prudent. The prudent thing to do seemed to be to take
the hit on the launch date, move it out to 2018 so we would not
decimate other parts of NASA's budget.
I think we have maintained a balanced portfolio. We still
plan to accomplish the scientific objectives that were laid out
in the budget that I submitted when I first became the NASA
administrator in 2011. Time frames have stretched out in some
cases. But, scientifically, I don't think we are going to miss
any of the objectives either from the decadal survey.
And I need to correct the record on one thing. We never had
a Mars sample return mission within our budget. So people think
that by stepping away from ExoMars we are stepping away from a
Mars sample return. There was no Mars sample return mission in
the two missions being planned for ExoMars. The 2018 mission
was a mission that would have a European drill that would core
even deeper than MSL is going to do. MSL goes inches. The
European drill hopefully will be able to go two meters into the
surface. So it will give us much better information.
The plan was that that material would be then be cached. It
would be put into a storage container of some type and then we
would have to go off and determine what subsequent missions
would enable us to either go to the surface and pick it up or
put it in orbit and fly a mission--for example, the first human
mission to orbit Mars--to go and pick that sample up and bring
it back.
So I think people misunderstand what ExoMars was. There was
no Mars sample return mission in ExoMars. NASA, although that
is a prime objective of the decadal survey, I think everyone on
the decadal survey study team understood we had no sample
return mission on the books. We can't afford it right now.
Mr. Wolf. Is it accurate that the planetary science decadal
survey says that any future Mars activity must contribute to
the goal?
Mr. Bolden. That is correct. What I am saying is that the
missions that we are trying to plan now in our restructured
Mars robotic program will in fact contribute to our ability to
plan and execute a future Mars sample return mission. It is
still to be determined--I am one who believes we do need
samples back before we send humans. That is not universally
accepted, this committee should understand. There are some--Mr.
Zubrin, for example, with the Mars Society--who will tell you
he vehemently disagrees. We know enough about Mars that we
could send humans today is the belief of some. I am not one who
shares that belief, but I am not smart enough to know. So our
intent is to mount an effort to fly a future sample return
mission so we know what is on the planet before we send humans.
Mr. Wolf. The original cost of James Webb was going to be
$1.5 billion; is that correct?
Mr. Bolden. Mr. Chairman, if I remember correctly--and it
was long before my time here--the original cost of James Webb
was billed to be much less, and it was a figment of people's
imagination.
Mr. Wolf. Do you know that figure, roughly?
Mr. Bolden. I think it was at one time $800 million when it
was first envisioned, and it was a figment of people's
imagination.
Mr. Wolf. But that is the way it was sold?
Mr. Bolden. Yes, sir. That is the way it was sold.
Mr. Wolf. So the fiscal year 2012 CJS bill included a
provision capping Webb formulation and development costs at $8
billion and requiring--and I think that is the important word--
NASA to get the program reauthorized if costs increased any
further?
Mr. Bolden. Yes, sir.
Mr. Wolf. NASA has proposed, though, to delete the cost
control language in the fiscal year 2013 request. Should this
be seen as a sign that OMB took control of this budget, or that
you don't intend to abide by the cap and reauthorization
provision?
Mr. Bolden. Chairman Wolf, I fully intend to comply by the
cap. There is no intent.
Mr. Wolf. So this is not necessary, what is being requested
with regard to deleting the cost control language?
Mr. Bolden. Mr. Chairman, I will have to take for the
record the response to that question. Because I don't recall
the rationale that we were giving for deleting the cost control
language, if that is in fact what we did. All I can tell you
now is my intent is to abide by the cap.
Mr. Wolf. So we should ignore that request then?
Mr. Bolden. Mr. Chairman, I said I will get you an answer
on that. I should know, but I don't know the rationale for the
request to delete the cap. And I will get that information and
provide it to you.
[The information follows:]

James Webb Space Telescope

The FY 2012 enacted appropriations language for Science (P.L. 112-
55) is consistent with NASA's replan for JWST. For FY 2013, the
Administrator recently re-affirmed at the hearing before the
Subcommittee on March 21, 2012 that NASA intends to abide by the cap.
NASA has no objection if the language is included again in FY 2013
recommendations by the House and Senate Committees on Appropriations.

JOINT CONFIDENCE LEVELS

Mr. Wolf. One last question in that area. It is NASA's
policy that all projects budget to a 70 percent joint cost and
schedule confidence level estimate. The budget request,
however, shows that the Webb cost estimate has a joint
confidence level of only 66 percent. Why is your highest
stakes, most complex science mission budgeted below the
agency's estimation standard? Should we be concerned that the
Webb schedule or budget are not sufficiently robust?
Mr. Bolden. Chairman Wolf, the schedule and the replan we
feel is very robust. We found recently, as you point out, that
the JCL level was 66.6 percent, less than 70 percent.
Mr. Wolf. Does it trouble you that it falls below the 70
percent standard?
Mr. Bolden. No, sir. The confidence in our ability----
Mr. Wolf. Curve, kind of?
Mr. Bolden. In this case--and this is out of my league--but
if you look at the curve, when we look at the confidence of our
ability to do this program, what was given we could spend this
much or this much, the curve goes up--what they call
asymptotic. It just turns straight up. So to put this amount of
money on it or that amount of money on it does not change the
confidence that we can execute in 2018 sufficiently that I
wanted to do that. And that is the reason we chose the
additional funds that we did request instead of a lot more.
JCLs are great. They are new, relatively new to us. We have
several missions that demonstrate to us that they are the way
to go. Juno, GRAIL, several other missions that have come since
we decided to use the JCL process.
James Webb, unfortunately, was pretty much sealed in
concrete before we started using JCL, so we have tried to apply
JCL to James Webb, but it gives us confidence that what we did
prior to JCLs was good and we have a good replan.
Mr. Wolf. Thank you.
Mr. Fattah.

COMMERCIAL CREW PROGRAM

Mr. Fattah. Thank you.
Mr. Administrator, I want to turn a little bit to the
Administration's priority on commercial crew. There has been a
lot of news lately in terms of where we are in commercial crew.
Why don't you summarize before I ask a few questions about how
you see the progress in relationship to this exciting effort to
engage American enterprise in helping to carry on low-Earth
orbit, interactions with the Space Station on a routine basis,
and the like.
Mr. Bolden. Congressman Fattah, I feel very good about
where we are. In spite of the low amount of funding in this
fiscal year's budget, we still have what I would call a very
good stable of potential proposers for the commercial crew
system that we hope to have in place by 2017. We know, because
they have been active with us through Space Act agreements,
that we have no less than seven, but we anticipate that there
will be many more than that, who will ask for an opportunity to
be considered for funds from the Space Act agreement that we
choose to use to develop the system to take humans to space. I
am very confident in what we have going right now.
If I may add, while it is different, we will see this
spring and summer the demonstration of private industry's
capability of doing what NASA used to do. That is taking cargo
to the International Space Station. As I have testified in
previous hearings, that is a big deal. That is an incredibly
big deal. When we have two private companies--one I think is
publicly traded, the other is not, so one in personal
investment and the other is corporate investment. When we see
them successfully put a capsule into space, rendezvous, and be
berthed to the International Space Station and become a part of
the International Space Station, that is a huge deal for the
United States of America.
Mr. Fattah. Obviously, the leadership to move this forward
when there was so many dollars, but you are referring to Falcon
9 and the efforts that are under way by SpaceX and some of the
other companies. As we move forward, the Administration's
request for commercial crew is a lot more significant this
year, at least based on active numbers from last year. Will you
explain where these dollars would fall in play?
Mr. Bolden. Congressman, if the committee will think back
to the Augustine report, at that time, the amount that was
deemed necessary for a viable commercial space program I want
to say was $6 billion. When I started asking questions of
industry themselves and others about what would it take for a
company to mount a successful effort to take humans to low-
Earth orbit, the answer that I got was about $2.5 billion per
company of NASA investment. That is not total cost. That is
NASA investment. And I still believe that number to be in the
ballpark.
Our original request was significantly more than the
request that we submitted in this year's budget of $830
million. It was $1.2 to $1.5 billion, because we felt that was
what was necessary. As we briefed previous hearings, if we got
less than that, it would stretch the time out.
We now find out, unfortunately, with the gap between
shuttle and an American capability to send humans to orbit
widening because we have less money, the ability to close the
gap is directly proportional--well, not directly proportional,
but it is proportional in some respect to the amount of money
that the Nation puts forth for that effort. So less money, more
time.

ASTROPHYSICS PROGRAM

Mr. Fattah. Let me shift gears to astrophysics, going to
some of the issues that the chairman was focusing on in terms
of planetary science. If you can give us an overview of the
astrophysics request, the $657 million or so, which includes a
number of the missions that are ongoing, if you can give the
committee an overview of what you are doing there and what you
intend to do?
Mr. Bolden. As I mentioned in my statement, we have a
number of telescopes currently on orbit, currently operating,
to include Chandra, Hubble, and others. If you look at Kepler,
the planet finder, we have now discovered that, where we
thought there were hundreds of planets, there are now millions
of other planets in our solar system, in our universe; and in
those families of planets there are some that potentially are
Earth size, Earth like, and could actually harbor life.
So the excitement from our astrophysics missions has
exploded, and a lot of that has been due to the accomplishments
of less-well-known missions like Kepler. SOPHIA, which is
flying out of Dryden and Ames now, it is a 747 with an airborne
telescope. SOPHIA is now into its science phase, and the
returns on information from SOPHIA is, in some ways, mind-
boggling.
The other part about SOPHIA that I think is incredible is,
when we talk about education, education is not just the money
that we put onto the university campuses or into high schools,
junior high schools and elementary schools. It is what we call
indirect education. We take teachers on the SOPHIA spacecraft
and we allow them to look at the data that is being gathered by
an airborne telescope. They couldn't do that before. That
doesn't come out of the education budget. That comes in the
SOPHIA budget in their educational outreach program.
So as we talk about education, there are a lot more ways to
educate the public than by putting direct money on it.
Sometimes we find that direct money doesn't have the result
that you want, and that is one of my concerns about education,
that we have metrics that demonstrate, as I mentioned in my
opening statement, demonstrable results in our education
programs.
When I became the NASA administrator, I can tell you I
don't think we had the ability to show anybody demonstrable
results on what we were getting for our dollar, and I think we
are getting to the point now where we can do that.

AERONAUTICS PROGRAM

Mr. Fattah. Two last questions. One on aeronautics, the
Boeing Dreamliner. We see a lot of advances in aviation
generally. A lot of this is based on NASA-related technology
and research, and I just want to give you an opportunity to
crow about it. Because a lot of times when the public is
flying--and we have the safest system of air travel anywhere in
the world--I don't think they have the benefit of knowing that
a lot of this is directly related to the research that you and
your team at NASA have done. So if you want to comment on that.
Then I have an actual more challenging question about the
fact that the Chairman and our counterparts in the Senate, at
the end of the day, we are going to have to wrestle with some
pretty tough decisions between the Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle,
the Webb, planetary science issues, and so on. And we have got
your testimony and we have the Administration's request, but,
to some degree here, we are not going to be able to fit all of
these priorities within what might be the available dollars.
So if you want to close out on that, that would be fine.
Mr. Bolden. Congressman, I would love to. I would love to
talk all day. You picked the plane. I didn't. Boeing may even
have some disagreement with my statement. It is a NASA
airplane. When you look at the technology in the Boeing 787, my
chest was sticking out when I visited the Boeing Everett plant
about a month ago and had an opportunity to get aboard the
airplane and look at the controls and displays. And they will
tell you, as you approach the airplane from the outside, it is
largely a composite structure that is developed from NASA
research. Critical wing.
You look at the engines themselves, the back of the engine,
you see it looks kind of funny because it looks like sharks'
teeth. We call them chevron nozzles. It is something that sat
on the shelf at the Glenn Research Center in Ohio for probably
10 years until General Electric and other engine manufacturers
came and picked it up.
It has significantly decreased the noise level from the
Boeing 787. I was told by the test folks at Boeing they are
restricted in running engine tests after 11:00 at night except
with the Boeing 787. The chevron nozzles have made the engine
so quiet that the community doesn't even know that they are
running engine tests. That is NASA technology.
We have done things with NASA aeronautics research that
have continued to make air travel safer and more efficient. We
anticipate--and this is in talking with industry, airline
industry, with United, Southwest, and other airlines who have
flown some of the tests on our new air traffic management
system for routing--potentially $300 million in fuel savings
just by using the new air traffic management systems, constant
climb, constant descent, where you don't have to level off all
the time. Those are things that NASA has done in our
aeronautics program.
For those of you who are fans of the military, as I am, the
Marine Corps flies an incredible aircraft called the Osprey,
the MV-22. It went through some rocky times, but that
originated with the XV-15, which was a NASA build.
Mr. Fattah. It is made in Philadelphia.
Mr. Bolden. Yes. Parts of it are made in Philadelphia.

NASA'S BUDGET CHALLENGES

Mr. Fattah. Thank you very much. I know your son is serving
in the Marines.
Talk to us about these budget challenges. What do you think
about the big ticket items for NASA?
Mr. Bolden. These are very difficult fiscal times. I know I
am preaching to the choir when I say that. Because of that, the
President and the leadership of the Congress, back in late
2010, came to a decision that we were going to establish three
priorities for the Agency. That doesn't say we are not going to
do other things, but we are going to really, really, really
promise that we will focus on these three priorities. Those
three priorities were a heavy-lift launch vehicle and the
Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle for exploration, underpinned,
however, by a NASA priority for technology development. We
cannot do exploration without enhancing our technology
development.
The second priority was enhanced utilization and expansion
of utilization of the International Space Station as an
incredible national laboratory. Critical for the success of
that, however, is another NASA priority, which is commercial
crew and cargo. Without having an American capability, we will
continue to pay the Russians a minimum of $450 million a year
for seats on Soyuz to get to the International Space Station. I
want to reduce that requirement as quickly as I can.
And the third priority in the area of science is the James
Webb Space Telescope, which is the most advanced, the most
critical scientific instrument for the world, not just the
Nation, in development today that will expand our understanding
of the universe many, many folds.
Those are the top three priorities. We tried to fully fund
all of those. And the remaining funds, we tried to balance
across our portfolio so that we could take the taxpayers' money
and spend it wisely.
I don't think that we have lost the effectiveness of
anything that we have planned in prior years. People keep
talking about efficiencies. If you don't gain from
efficiencies, which you have to do when you have less money,
then it is kind of hopeless. I think we are gaining
efficiencies in the way that we operate, the way we manage
programs.
James Webb is a great example. We have met every milestone
in the last year and a half on our replanned James Webb Space
Telescope effort. Some of it is efficiencies, some of it is
discipline, and some of it is just deciding that we are going
to take a different course of action than we took before. We
are trying to do the same thing with the robotic Mars program.
Mr. Wolf. Mr. Austria.

UNMANNED AERIAL SYSTEMS

Mr. Austria. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
General Bolden, we thank you for all of your hard work with
NASA.
I would like to follow up a little bit on Congressman
Fattah's questioning on aeronautics research. I was pleased to
see in your testimony that NASA is continuing to work with the
Department of Defense to maximize efficiencies, current assets,
investments, and increase partnerships to accomplish common
goals.
One of the emerging industries that I think holds great
promise for both our national defense and also our State of
Ohio is the unmanned aerial systems. You brought that up in
your testimony. You discussed NASA's work with NextGen and the
future aviation of America, as well as the administration's
request for $104 million for the integrated systems research
program within the aeronautics research budget.
Again, I was very pleased that NASA is working to integrate
UASs into the National Airspace System. Can you go into a
little more detail as far as NASA's work with the UAS systems,
the industry technology, as well as the work, the partnership
you are doing with the Department of Defense?
Mr. Bolden. We are very closely tied to the FAA and the
Department of Defense in trying to come up with the software
and traffic management systems that will facilitate the
integration of unmanned aerial systems into the National
Airspace System. That is easier said than done. Most pilots
don't like having unmanned aerial vehicles flying around them.
Part of it is education.
As late as yesterday afternoon, in trying to give Secretary
Donley, the Secretary of the Air Force, a heads-up on what I
was going to talk about in this hearing, he and I agreed that
we should, in the next few weeks, have a joint NASA-DOD meeting
on unmanned aerial systems and the efforts under way to improve
the technology to integrate them.
If you go to the Dryden Flight Research Center right now,
we have a test that we are developing in conjunction with
Northrop Grumman, the producer of the big UAV--and I apologize
for having a brain poo and forgetting the name. It will come to
me.
But it is used right now for multiple purposes. We have
developed the capability of putting scientific instruments on
it. We do studies at both poles now that we could not do before
because we have systems that enable it to fly up in the polar
regions where navigation is difficult. We are now getting ready
to do an in-flight refueling test where we use one UAV to
refuel the other one.
So these are some of the things that we are doing that will
advance the integration of UAVs into the National Airspace
System.
Mr. Austria. I appreciate that, and I appreciate the fact
that you are working with Secretary Donley on this and also the
FAA. Clearly, they are in the middle of all of this and have
some tough decisions to make.
Mr. Bolden. Global Hawk, by the way. It is age.
Mr. Austria. One of the concerns and one of the challenges
that I have had in this area is that we have had several
agencies working to advance the unmanned technologies, but
there doesn't appear to be a comprehensive, administration-wide
strategy for moving the industry forward. And I think this is
especially true when it comes to issues of airspace and
integration, the UAS systems, if you want to call it UAVs or
RPAs.
For example, many agencies are supporting research on
various UAS technologies, but the airspace and regulation
standards needed to deploy the technology doesn't seem to be
ready or doesn't seem to be a comprehensive plan to move that
forward from this administration. Is that one of the hurdles
that you are facing? Are you working together to try to
overcome that, to try to put together a comprehensive plan?
Mr. Bolden. Congressman Austria, I think there is a
comprehensive plan on the part of the administration to try to
move it forward. When I talk about collaboration among the FAA,
DOD, and NASA in integration of UASs into the National Airspace
System, the Department of Homeland Security also gets involved
in it. So we have executive committees that are responsible for
trying to develop a comprehensive policy for UAS use. What
Secretary Donley and I were talking about is a senior-level
meeting that we need to have to make sure that the
administration's policy promotes exactly what you are talking
about.
Mr. Austria. I would like to see that comprehensive plan,
if there is a plan. That would be very helpful as we look at
this in Ohio.
[The information follows:]

SHUTTLE ORBITER DISPOSITION

Mr. Austria. Let me go back--and I know you knew I was
going to ask you this question with the shuttles and that whole
process. We are still trying to understand that. Questions
still get raised back home, and there are still frustrations
back home. I know you had a very difficult decision.
Let me start with I am sure you are aware of the report
language that was put in the conference report that came out of
this committee as far as NASA being directed to submit
quarterly reports to the committee on the status of its
disposition of the four space shuttle orbiters. Help me
understand what is going on in New York with Intrepid and that
situation. Because, as I read about what is going on, as I get
information about what is going on, it raises concerns on our
end that we happened to have a facility that was ready to go,
and now we are seeing what is going on in New York. So I want
to better understand that situation and whether you were aware
that they did not have a site that was ready to house the
shuttle and that this would have to be pushed off to 2014?
Mr. Bolden. Congressman, a couple of things. We are
required to submit a report to you. The latest one we submitted
was January of this year. It is a regular report on the
status--in fact, it is called the ``quarterly report regarding
status of space shuttle orbiter distribution.'' We have been
delivering that, I have to check with the committee--but I
think we have reached an agreement that the submissions have
been sufficient and we may be relieved of the responsibility to
do that. But I don't know yet. That was the last conversation I
had.
At that time that I made the decision on where the orbiters
were going to go, to my knowledge, there was only one facility
in the country that had completed a structure specifically to
house an orbiter. Unfortunately, that facility did not get an
orbiter.
So there was no facility in Ohio, no facility in New York,
no facility in California, no facility in Texas, no facility
anywhere ready to put the orbiter on display, not even at the
Kennedy Space Center. Every one of the locations that received
an orbiter now has a plan that has been reviewed by NASA, an
engineering plan, a funding plan in place that has passed the
muster for us, and we are confident they will be able to do it.
I think the middle of next month we will make delivery of
Discovery to the National Air and Space Museum. That will begin
the consecutive movement of orbiters. When we deliver Discovery
to the National Air and Space Museum, we will put Enterprise on
top of the 747 and transport it to JFK, where New York's plan
is to take it by barge across the river. It will be temporarily
displayed on board the Intrepid while the final facility across
the street is prepared for it.
The facility at the Kennedy Space Center groundbreaking
took place about a month ago, and that is expected to be ready
I think in 2013-2014.
The California Science Center already has their facility
underway, and they have an elaborate plan for transporting
Endeavour from LAX through the streets of Los Angeles with a
parade. They have quite extensive things that they have to do
to get it there.
But every place has a plan in place and a funding plan, and
we have received all monies that are due in transfer for the
orbiters.
Mr. Austria. I appreciate that, Mr. Administrator.
The concern that we have not just in Ohio but throughout
the Midwest--and I have also submitted a letter with my
colleague, Congressman Olson from Texas, on how this criteria,
what was known and what wasn't known prior to the choice, the
criteria. I am looking at a criteria sheet that came back to us
on the transportation risk criteria, and it turns out there was
a mistake on NASA's part when they went through this criteria
stuff, a cut-and-paste mistake where they put the wrong number
in, for example, the National Museum of the United States Air
Force which lowered our score. That is coming from the
Inspector General's report.
Then when you put that in, we had an equal score with two
of the recipients. That raises concerns on my end as to how
this choice was made, who was making the decision, and what
criteria was used. When you have a mistake as a result of a
cut-and-paste error during the finalization of the chart and we
don't find out until 4 months later through the Inspector
General that, yes, there was a mistake; and, by the way, you
were rated as high as, if the right number was in here, as two
of the sites that received a shuttle. That raises concerns on
my part as to the integrity and also how accurate this criteria
choice was. It is not just Ohio.
Mr. Bolden. Congressman, I won't disagree or challenge
anything you say, but I will ask my staff to come over and
brief you. I know what you are talking about. I think what you
will find when the staff comes over and briefs you is that
there were significant shortcomings on the proposal from the
National Museum of the Air Force, not the least of which was
funding. So I will have the staff come over, and we can brief
in detail and discuss it with you.
To be quite honest, I asked each of the facilities to brief
their congressional delegations first so that they would be
able to share with you what they thought their shortcomings
were. They could tell you--and I do not want to get into a
public debate about the shortcomings of any of the places that
were not selected to receive an orbiter.
The three locations, because I am not counting the National
Air and Space Museum, that is funded by the government, by
NASA. But the other locations, they have provided funds. They
had funds either promised or on hand. They provided designs for
facilities to display, and they were shown to be in some cases
objectively but in some cases subjectively superior to the ones
that did not get them. But I will have my staff brief you.
Mr. Austria. My question is more in the broader sense, the
process that was used. The reports, you said that you submitted
one in January. I am anxious to take a look at that. I haven't
seen that. As to the status in New York, and again when
information is brought after the fact to us that there was a
mistake, that is a concern.
Mr. Bolden. Congressman, I think you will probably find
that the mistakes that were made--and there were mistakes--
affected every single site that was a competitor, to include
some of those that received them.
Mr. Austria. How have you responded to that?
Mr. Bolden. I have responded to each person or each entity
that had a complaint. I met with some who came in personally
and explained my choice. Why, even after I looked at the
corrected information, why I had made the decision to stay with
the entities that were awarded the orbiter. So there was
nothing subjectively that changed significantly that would have
made me pick one other over some of the others that already had
it.
Mr. Austria. So what you are saying is, had you known that
information prior to the decision, you would have made the same
decision?
Mr. Bolden. What I am saying is, had everything been
totally accurate the way that I told the IG when I testified
for the IG investigation, I said, once I found out there were
mistakes, I went back and I looked at where those mistakes were
made. I reevaluated the relative standing of all of the
entities that were being considered, and there was nothing of
significance that caused me to want to change my mind about a
location. That is all that I am saying.
Mr. Austria. I appreciate that. Thank you.
Mr. Bolden. Congressman, almost every facility that
requested an orbiter, put in a request and a proposal, has
subsequently received significant artifacts from the space
shuttle program, some to include full-scale mock-ups,
simulators in which the astronauts trained. Granted, everybody
wanted an orbiter, but I think you will find, if you talk to
some of them who got some of the other artifacts, from a
practical perspective, while they didn't capture an orbiter
that people can look at, from an educational and an outreach
perspective, they won the prize.
Because the Museum of Flight, for example, has a fuselage
trainer. They can put kids in and out of that thing. They can
do exactly what astronauts did. No one who got a flown orbiter
can do that, because none of the flown orbiters are going to be
opened up. There are going to be there for display, still
incredible, but not what you can do with a trainer that you can
actually use and let children, students, climb all over and go
through.
Mr. Austria. I appreciate that.
Mr. Wolf. Before we go to Mr. Schiff, we are going to go to
Mr. Aderholt because he has to chair a hearing at 10:00.

SPACE LAUNCH SYSTEM FUNDING

Mr. Aderholt. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Bolden, it is good to see you today. It was good to see
you last night at the event honoring Dr. von Braun on his 100th
birthday, which we are celebrating this week.
Just a couple of things. As the chairman said, I have to
slip out. I have to chair another subcommittee in just a few
minutes.
There are some concern by many of us about the slow
development of SLS. But I do want to say that I appreciate the
recent help to my staff from your personnel on that matter.
Given the fact that you once said that SLS needs to catch up
with the capsule program, the Orion, why is the request for
fiscal year 2013 so far below the authorized level?
Mr. Bolden. Congressman, the funding for SLS--and I think
we have tried to work with your staff to show you how the
funding for vehicle development, now that we have broken out in
separate budget lines vehicle development from exploration
ground systems and 21st century plus construction of
facilities, four different accounts, the funds for SLS meet the
authorized level, if I am not mistaken. We have $1.3 billion
set aside for SLS, and that is strictly for vehicle
development.
If you look at what is going on with the vehicle, the
testing, we have fired the upper stage, and we have fired the
J2-X engine that is in development for SLS a couple of times
now. So we are actually beginning to pick up the pace, and we
are doing testing and development continuously.
Glenn has some cryogenic propellant storage test and work
right now that will contribute to lowering the weight of the
eventual 100 metric ton SLS that will enable it to take more
payload to deep space. We are looking at a new fuel tank that
is lower in weight because it is a different composite tank.
There is quite a bit of work in terms of technology development
that is ongoing for the SLS that you won't see in phase one in
the 70 metric ton version that will launch in 2017 but that you
will see down the road.
So I think we are doing as much if not more on SLS right
now than we are actually doing on the Multi-Purpose Crew
Vehicle, because MPCV was so far along. MPCV has completed
water drop tests. It has done its vibration testing. It is well
along compared to everything else. So we are ramping up the
work on the SLS.

COMMERCIAL CARGO PROGRAM

Mr. Aderholt. Let me switch gears. What is the total cost
so far spent on commercial space beyond the $500 million for
COTS, especially the CRS account and resupplying the Station?
Mr. Bolden. Yes. I will take that question for the record,
but the amounts that have been spent on COTS and CRS so far are
documented. We have essentially spent nothing on CRS except for
some of the additional milestones that we added to the COTS
program to buy down the risk on cargo resupply. So we did
advance those companies some funds from the CRS contract that
they would not ordinarily have gotten until they actually got
into CRS because we are not into that yet. We are still in the
COTS program.
The end of the COTS program will be the demonstration
flights that are coming this spring and summer. SpaceX has one
more, and right now their forecast is to launch on April 30.
That will be two demonstration flights in one. They will do
demo two and three, provided everything goes well. And they
will be finished with the COTS program, and then they will move
into CRS hopefully by the end of summer and hopefully fly one
CRS mission in fiscal year 2012.
Orbital is a little further behind. We are hoping they will
fly their demonstration mission to close out COTS, and then
they will begin to fly their CRS in early 2013.
Other than what we spent in the Commercial Crew Development
CCDev Program, those are the only funds that NASA has spent
toward commercial crew to date. We have not selected a vendor
yet, so we have not spent any money on development of a system.
That is what we are trying to decide now with the extension of
the Space Act Agreements and selection of competitors that will
come this summer.
[The information follows:]

Commercial Space Program

The total spent on commercial space in support of the International
Space Station is $1.8B, including the original $500M for COTS ($1.3B
without the original $500M). Please see the detailed support below. It
should be noted that NASA pays from $200-400M a year to purchase
commercial launch services for other science related NASA missions. In
addition, since FY 2005, NASA has paid Russia approximately $1.7B for
crew and cargo transportation services.

Commercial Orbital Transportation System

TOTAL AMOUNT OF FUNDED MILESTONES PAID FOR COTS PARTNERS AS OF 2/29/12
[In $millions]
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Original $500M Augmentation Total budget Payments
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Total COTS Payments............................. 500.0 287.4 787.4 723.9
Space Act Agreements............................ 480.1 236.0 716.1 674.6
Commercial Resupply Services (CRS) *............ -- 17.5 17.5 17.5
Other Management and Support.................... 19.9 33.9 53.7 31.8
COTS Without CRS ($17.5M)....................... 500.0 269.9 769.9 706.4
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
* Please note that COTS has funded demonstration activities on the CRS contract for both Orbital Sciences and
SpaceX. These activities allow Orbital Sciences and SpaceX to fully demonstrate the delivery of cargo to ISS
(``over the hatch'').

Commercial Resupply

TOTAL AMOUNT OF FUNDED MILESTONES PAID FOR CRS PARTNERS AS OF 2/29/12
[In $millions]
------------------------------------------------------------------------

------------------------------------------------------------------------
SpaceX.................................................. $337.6
Orbital................................................. 497.9
---------------
Total Cost........................................ 835.5 *
------------------------------------------------------------------------
* 17.5M was paid using Commercial Transportation Systems (COTS) funding.
The remaining payments used ISS funding.

Commercial Crew

PAID FROM FY 2009 THROUGH 2/29/12
[In $millions]
------------------------------------------------------------------------

------------------------------------------------------------------------
CCDev 1 Space Act Agreements............................ $49.8
CCDev 1 Other Management Support........................ 0.3
CCDev 2 Space Act Agreements............................ 201.2
Human Rating Requirements............................... 0.9
CCDev 2 Other Management and Support.................... 24.9
---------------
Total Commercial Crew............................. 277.1
------------------------------------------------------------------------

Mr. Aderholt. Okay. I have to slip out to chair another
subcommittee, but thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, Mr.
Schiff.
Mr. Bolden. Congressman, thank you very much for your
remarks last night.
Mr. Aderholt. It was good to be there, and I know that
everybody appreciated your attendance as well.
But I will submit some more for the record.
Mr. Wolf. Mr. Schiff.

MARS PROGRAM AND THE FLAGSHIP MISSION FUTURE

Mr. Schiff. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Administrator, as you know, I am deeply troubled by the
NASA budget in which science is cut overall by $162 million and
planetary science by $300 million, resulting in the
administration's shortsighted proposal to walk away from the
ExoMars program with ESA that would have put an orbiter around
Mars in 2016 and a lander on the surface 2 years later to begin
the process of catching samples for a later return to Earth. I
don't need to tell you that a Mars sample return is the top of
the scientists' list and that the 2018 mission is ranked at the
top of the current planetary decadal.
I also don't need to remind you that the number two mission
is the Europa orbiter that will give us insight into one of the
solar system's most mysterious bodies.
And if there is any questions about the priorities of this
committee, as the language Mr. Culberson proposed last year
makes clear, those planetary decadal priorities are our
priorities as well. No element to the American space program
has generated more public excitement and interest over the past
decade than our robotic exploration of the Red Planet. In the
days following Spirit's landing in January of 2004, NASA's web
servers crashed under an assault from literally millions of
people worldwide who wanted to see the latest pictures from the
Martian surface.
These proposed cuts not only threaten the most successful
exploration program in NASA history, they also imperil what is
certainly the world's most specialized workforce, the engineers
and scientists at JPL who specialize in entry, descent, and
landing on other planets.
I do not need to tell you how difficult it is to do this
kind of work. There have been more failures than successes at
landing vehicles on Mars, and ours is the only country to have
yet succeeded. But this is a workforce and a capability that
cannot survive long periods of inactivity. If we adopt your
reconfigured Mars program, a drastic scaling back of our
capacity to do this kind of edge-of-the-envelope science will
be the inevitable consequence.
I think cannibalizing the Mars program, which gets closer
to unlocking the secrets of Mars' past with each mission and
discovery, is a major step backwards for NASA and the Nation.
While human space flight has been stuck in low-Earth orbit for
three decades and now is reliant on the Russians and with James
Webb still years away from launch, the Mars program is the key
driver of public support for the space program. In short, I
think the budget proposal is a disaster for our leadership in
space.
I want to thank the chairman sincerely for calling a
timeout to give us a chance to fully explore this proposal and
I hope come up with something much better.
I am perplexed at the responses that you gave to the
chairman's questions at the outset of this hearing. When he
asked you why the disproportionate and devastating cuts to
planetary science and particularly the Mars program and your
response was ``the Mars program was in the best shape,'' I
don't understand that answer. That is an answer that says, in
order to make budget cuts, we savage the most successful
program we have.
I do not think you can come here and tout MSL, because this
committee is about the future. It is about what we are going to
do in the future, and to rely on MSL is to rely on our past.
That was a program that was developed largely under the Bush
administration, and for this administration at NASA to say that
this is proof of our ongoing commitment to Mars just falls
desperately short to me. Because if you were before this
committee while MSL was still on the drawing board, you would
be coming before us to tell us to pull the plug on MSL, and I
think that is a tragic place to be.
We now have a decadal survey, a top priority that will not
be undertaken if your proposal is accepted. It will not be
taken by the United States. It will be taken by the Europeans
now in partnership with the Russians, and I think it is a sad
state of affairs when we are already reliant on the Russians to
get a lift to the Space Station. We are also going to tell the
Europeans that they can't count on us any more. They need to
count on the Russians for the top priority of our own
scientists.
And I also don't understand the response you gave to the
chairman about the decadal when he asked you, isn't this
inconsistent with the decadal priorities? And your answer was
something to the effect of, no, canceling the ExoMars missions,
canceling the top priority of the decadal, which is to catch
those samples this decade, is somehow advancing the decadal
priorities.
That is a very Orwellian answer, in my view. That says that
the way to go forward is to go backward. The way to go up is to
go down. And just by saying so doesn't make it so. If we walk
away from the decadal, we are walking away from the decadal. No
amount of spin or rhetoric can change that fact.
What I would like to try to understand is, when you came
before our committee last year, when you met individually with
members of this committee and you said that we could do a
flagship mission to Mars, that we had the budget to do a
flagship mission to Mars, and we agreed with you on doing a
flagship, even though it meant condensing some of what had been
planned, when did you make the decision during the last 12
months that that was no longer the case? Was that a decision
you made, or was that a decision OMB made?
And if it was a decision that OMB made, why is OMB deciding
what the planetary decadal priorities ought to be? I understand
they can give you a top line, but the thing I don't understand
is the top line for the NASA budget is essentially flat from
the year before, and I don't think you or we on this committee
expect it to be any different. None of us thought that the NASA
budget we dramatically improve, so there is no surprise in
going from last year to this year in terms of what the top line
is.
What I would like to know is, did this proposal to abandon
the flagship missions, did that come from you or was that
proposed by OMB?
Mr. Bolden. Congressman, the decision came from me.
Mr. Schiff. I am not asking where the decision came from. I
am asking where the proposal came from.
Mr. Bolden. The decision came from me.
Mr. Schiff. I understand the decision came from you. Where
did the proposal come from? Did you propose this or did OMB
propose this?
Mr. Bolden. I asked the question because I spend time with
my counterpart in the European Space Agency, Mr. Jean-Jacques
Dordain, who has the responsibility for managing the 19 nations
that are part of ESA.
As we talked from 2009, when I signed my first letter of
intent with him, to continue to talk about the ExoMars
mission--and I think if you look at documentation, if you talk
to him, we never committed to the ExoMars mission. We always
had difficulty trying to determine that we would have the
funds.
Mr. Schiff. Let me get back to the question, which is, did
the proposal come from you, or did it come from OMB?
Mr. Bolden. The question that led to my decision came from
me. I asked, how are we going to do a Mars sample return based
on the budget that we have currently? And this was not this
budget. This was the budget in place for 2012, even the budget
for 2011. What is the level of detail in the 2018 mission? And
at that time, when I was told, well, we are developing the 2018
mission with ESA, I said, well, okay, what about the sample
return? Well, that will come on subsequent missions. That is
not something that I was----
Mr. Schiff. Mr. Administrator, the sample return was always
going to come on subsequent missions. No one was ever proposing
that we were going to go and catch the samples and bring them
back on the same mission. That was always the proposal.
Mr. Bolden. Well, the only person who did not understand
that was me.
Mr. Schiff. My question, Mr. Administrator, I still have
not gotten an answer to, which is, where did the proposal to
cancel the flagship missions come from? Did that come from you,
or did it come from OMB?
Mr. Bolden. The proposal came from coordinated efforts
between my science experts, the people in NASA, our talks with
the White House, with OMB and OSTP, and our talks with our
international partners.
Mr. Schiff. And when did this happen?
Mr. Bolden. It started happening actually as early as 2009
when I signed the letter of intent.
Mr. Schiff. Then when you came in here last year and you
told us we had the resources to do the Flagship----
Mr. Bolden. At the time, I thought we had the resources to
do that because the budget was $2 billion higher than it is
right now.
Mr. Schiff. But now you are telling me back in 2009, you
decided you did not have the resources?
Mr. Bolden. I did not decide I did not have the resources.
I began to question whether we had the resources then. Because
as I said, you and others fully understood that ExoMars was not
a sample return. I was not that smart. I thought ExoMars was a
sample return so that is what the Decadal Survey said.
Mr. Schiff. You understood from us last year that our
priority was to do the top of the Decadal Survey?
Mr. Bolden. Yes, sir.
Mr. Schiff. And as the NASA budget has not changed, I can
only conclude that you and OMB and the White House had already
made the decision you were going to cancel the Flagship mission
and just did not want to tell us, or apropos of the chairman's
question about why you want to remove the language limiting the
cost overruns on Webb, that it is now your view that those
costs are going to continue to increase, and therefore, you
need to come in and cannibalize the successful Mars program,
because something changed over the last 12 months?
Mr. Bolden. A number of things changed over the last 12
months. And my growth into this job and my understanding of the
complexity of the missions we were doing and our ability to
mount a sample return mission changed; my understanding of that
changed. And I could not----
Mr. Schiff. So it is not a change in Webb from last year?
Mr. Fattah. Let him finish his answer.
Mr. Bolden. There is. There is a change in Webb from last
year. Last year, Webb was gone. And I felt that the James Webb
Space Telescope was so critical to this Nation and the
international science community, we could not make that
shortsighted decision. And so I fought to get funding for the
James Webb Space Telescope. As I told the chairman, what I
would like to have done was asked for enough money to launch
James Webb in 2014. That would have been irresponsible because
that would have decimated the science budget.
Mr. Schiff. When you came to this committee to argue for
Webb and the chairman raised the concern about Webb, you did
not tell the chairman or any of us that you want to do Webb,
but by the way, we are not going to be able to do Mars if we do
this?
Mr. Bolden. I did not know that at the time.
Mr. Schiff. And when did you have this epiphany that you
could not afford Mars anymore?
Mr. Bolden. Congressman, it wasn't an epiphany. It was a
successive understanding of our posture fiscally and a
successive understanding on my part of our technical capability
that told me that I could not--and as I told Jean-Jacques
Dordain, I cannot in good conscious allow them to continue to
think that the United States is going to be there for them on a
sample return mission in 2018 that we cannot support, we cannot
afford. So I said we need to step back. And as I told them--
most of this happened before Christmas. Because we had people
in Paris, France, in negotiations with Roscosmos and the
European Space Agency. And I finally decided, I called Jean-
Jacques, and I said, I cannot in good conscience allow our
folks to continue to sit there discussing something that we
know we will not be able to support.
So if we want to be able to launch in the 2018-2020 window,
and that is what Dr. John Grunsfeld is trying to do now, is
find a series of missions that are decreased in scope but
accomplish the basic objectives of setting up a subsequent Mars
sample return mission, and I think we will do that.
Mr. Schiff. Mr. Administrator, I cannot in good conscience
support a budget that says that America's days of leadership in
space science are limited; that, Europe, you cannot count on
us; that China is ascendent in its Mars program; that you got
to go to Russia and later China; that we are going to walk away
from our own decadal priority, our own top priority of our
science community; that when we are this tantalizingly close to
finding the building blocks of life on another planet, that we
are going to walk away and that we are going to rest on the
laurels of the administrations and the generations that went
before. I cannot in good conscience support that kind of
proposal.
And I yield back.
Mr. Bolden. Congressman, as I mentioned to you once before,
I would hope that you would not put MSL in the past when you
communicate with people at the Jet Propulsion Lab. We have the
hardest part of that mission coming, and for them to believe
that their Representative feels that that is something in the
past, the most difficult part of that mission----
Mr. Schiff. I don't think the mission is in the past. And
no one has greater respect for the work that those brilliant
people are doing than I do. But what I resent is coming in here
and using MSL as a justification to cancel the future of the
Mars program and the flagship missions.
And I can tell you, Mr. Administrator, there is no one at
JPL working on MSL or any other program that will accept the
argument that because they are working so hard and had such
great success with MSL thus far, that we should cancel our
future flagships.
Mr. Bolden. And Congressman, we have not given up on
flagships. We have not given up on future flagships. What I
have Dr. Grunsfeld doing is trying to come up with a plan that
will allow us to strategically approach the next flagship
mission to Mars that will enable us to do a sample return
mission. That is still a primary objective of our Mars
exploration program. We are trying to accomplish the science
objectives of the joint ESA-NASA collaboration that was going
on in ExoMars, and we intend to facilitate their success to the
greatest amount we can to also accomplish the priorities of the
planetary decadal, which said a Mars sample return mission is
our number one objective.
They did not say ExoMars. They said ExoMars is an example
of a mission that will facilitate that success. There are more
ways to do that than participating in ExoMars. We will
cooperate with the Europeans and maybe the Russians, but it
will be an international effort that brings us a sample return
mission. And it will happen in the foreseeable future.
We are not giving up on Mars. We are not decimating the
Mars program. We have what I think is a very ambitious Mars
program. We have not given up on Europa. We have three studies
under way right now just looking at how we can attack the
planet Europa, the moon. And we have got to figure out how we
prioritize our science budget so that we can accomplish as many
of those goals as possible. We cannot do them all. We cannot do
them all, so we are trying to prioritize such that we will
achieve the objectives that are set out.
Mr. Schiff. The last thing I am going to say, and I
appreciate the indulgence of the chairman because I know I have
taken more than my time, those are all fine words, but they do
not make it so. And defunding Europa does not mean that you are
pushing forward with Europa; canceling the flagships does not
mean you are pushing forward with an aggressive Mars program.
It is exactly the opposite. And I wish that we could all get by
on good words, but what matters is the deeds. And the deeds
right now are canceling the flagship missions; they are
canceling Europa; they are ceding to Russia the role with ESA
meeting the number one priority of our scientists and the
Decadal Survey. And that is a very sad proposal and one that I
cannot accept.
And I yield back.
Mr. Bolden. And Congressman, I promise, we will discuss the
status of the Mars program after we land on Mars in August. And
I think you will see the interest in Mars explode. So I think
we do not have the program in place that I would like to have,
because I do not have endless money, but we have a program in
place that I think will bring great results. And we have not
given up our leadership on exploration of Mars, whether human
or robotic. So I think we respectfully disagree on the status
of the program right now, but I think we have the same
objective in mind, and we will get there.
Mr. Wolf. Mr. Yoder.

AMERICA'S LEADERSHIP IN EXPLORATION

Mr. Yoder. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
General, I appreciate you being here today. I appreciate
you coming back. We had you here last year and had a good
conversation, this committee and all of your hard-working
staff, and I have had a chance to interact about the future of
space exploration and the United States continuing to be a
leader in that endeavor. I am a big fan of what you do at NASA,
not only from the economic and scientific issues, but just from
your ability to inspire Americans to dream. And I know you have
had a long career in service. And there are probably a lot of
things you could be doing with your time, and I appreciate the
fact that you are dedicating your interest to trying to help
inspire Americans and to continue to help the United States be
a pioneer in space exploration.
I note in your budget that there has been a decline in
resources that Congress has provided, and that is kind of rare.
I have been on Appropriations now--this is the second year.
Mostly we look at big increases on the discretionary side,
requests for even more. Washington's version of a spending cut
is not as big of an increase as you requested for many
agencies.
So you are actually dealing with constrained resources. You
are really trying to be creative looking at what you are doing
with commercialization of space exploration and trying to
continue to pioneer under restricted resources. And so I
thought I might just give you an opportunity to give us an idea
of what we could do if we had additional resources, what the
potential is for the United States space exploration if we had
the ability to find additional resources, what we are, you know
certainly when we are looking at shortening the distance
between Earth and Mars in terms of the speed, some of the
things that it is just a matter of getting to the technology,
and where are we in terms of those types of things? What is on
the horizon? What is on the 25, 50-year plan? And are these
things that we are trying to get to some day a function of
resources, or are they a function of capabilities that we are
not sure we will ever obtain? You know, we have dreams, but can
we get there. If you had unlimited resources, say, what could
we actually be doing at this point?
Mr. Bolden. Congressman, I will not conjecture on what we
could do with ultimate resources.
Mr. Yoder. Additional resources.
Mr. Bolden. You asked two questions. The first question I
will answer. The biggest challenge is capabilities, and
resources do bring capabilities. But the shortcoming for us
right now as the Agency responsible for maintaining America's
leadership in exploration is capabilities. That is why when we
talk about priorities, while not one of the top three,
technology development is a critical priority for NASA. It is
only through the technology development, whether we are talking
about cryogenic propellant and storage, cryogenic propellant
transfer, solar electric propulsion, those things will help us
answer the questions that you talked about speed in going from
Earth to Mars. Those are capabilities that we have in
development.
Our space technology program has over 1,000 projects right
now that are funded. The increased funding I would like to see
is full funding for the budget that the President requested.
Because we have crafted that budget such that it fully supports
the three priorities agreed to by the President and the
Congress. But it also enables us to take care of the internal
priorities that we have, which are trying to craft a strategic
program for robotic exploration of Mars, as Congressman Schiff
talks about, that will facilitate achievement of the science
objectives going there, that will enable us to fulfill the
priority of the Decadal Survey, which is to facilitate a future
Mars sample return mission, all of which support the
President's challenge to us to put humans in orbit or in the
martian environment by the mid 2030s.
It is critical for us to get the President's budget request
funded to the level he requested or we do stand an opportunity
or a chance of relinquishing our leadership, and I don't want
to do that. Anyone who thinks we are not the leader today, I
would beg to differ. Everyone still looks at us. Our European
partners, in spite of the differences that we have had over
ExoMars, that is not the only thing that we do with our
European partners. Our European partners are really dependent
upon us for James Webb because they are a partner. They are
providing the launch vehicle. They are providing some of the
instruments. The Europeans work with us on aeronautics. They
are dependent on us being there, and we are there. You can go
through and look at what we are doing with South American
nations.
We are the leaders in the world in exploration, whether it
is human or robotic. We have not relinquished that leadership.
To give up and not fund the President's budget would be to say,
we have decided that we are okay being a follower. So that is
why I am fighting for this budget. We have done the absolute
best we could do to prioritize and make sure that we retain our
leadership.
Mr. Yoder. Well, and I think reassuring the country and the
world that the United States is going to continue to be the
pioneer in this endeavor is something we have to continue to
do. Your statements are critical to that. I know certainly when
we are back in our districts and we are talking to regular
folks who are inspired by space exploration, young people in
our district, without having the shuttles now and seeing
American astronauts go to Russia to be able to head to space
does not provide I think that assurance that you are also
saying that you want the country to have. And so partly the
shuttle program was a great symbol. And every time the shuttles
went up, it was a reassurance I think to Americans that we were
charting the course. And so however we continue to get to that
point, I think we want to be supportive.
Are there things that Congress is doing besides the funding
issue that would be helpful to stop doing either on the
regulatory side, or are there things that make it more
difficult for NASA to achieve its mission because of another
factor?
Mr. Bolden. Congressman, there are issues that we are
working on with the administration right now to bring proposals
to you. I think the Secretary of State, the Secretary of
Defense, all of us have talked about modification or relief
from some of the restrictions that we have that impede the
Americans' ability to do trade or to do development in some
fields of technology with other nations. But that is beyond the
purview of NASA. But those are things that I think I would echo
what other people in positions of leadership in this
administration have said.

SPACE COMMERCIALIZATION

Mr. Yoder. I think certainly going forward, the concept of
the commercialization of space is going to continue to be a
part of, space exploration, is going to continue to be a part
of NASA's mission. And that utilization and partnership with
private industry appears to be a very successful way to
approach some of these cost constraints we have in harnessing
the creativity of the free market, the entrepreneurs, the
innovators out there that come up with their own ideas. And all
those programs I think have been helpful. We might speak about
that a little bit. We were trying to look at some data back in
the office and the commercial cargo program, my understanding
is that NASA's cost models would have had SpaceX's Falcon 9
launcher cost $4 billion where SpaceX developed it for $400
million. Are there other examples where we have been able to do
things in a more efficient way utilizing commercialization?
Mr. Bolden. Congressman, there are countless--let me not
say countless. There are examples that I can provide for you
that show where reliance on private entities to do the
development with us as a partner have resulted in cost savings.
We are not done with commercial cargo and crew to the
International Space Station, so I would not be one that would
want to hang laurels on where we are yet.
But so far, the trend and the subjective indication is that
we are definitely saving funds. When you look at the commercial
crew program we have spent hundreds of millions instead of
billions in getting to the point where we are about to have
private companies deliver cargo to the International Space
Station. At this point of development in a human capability, we
have spent hundreds of millions as opposed to billions as we
would have done or as we did in the past NASA programs. The
only difference being that we have relied on industry to do the
development at their pace and using their brain power with us
as consultants as opposed to making it our project that we
dictate to them the pace and the content. We are not dictating
pace and content; they are.

PLUTONIUM PRODUCTION

Mr. Yoder. Well, I appreciate that, and something certainly
we are going to have to continue I think all to work together
going forward to determine what that best balance is. But I
think you continue to try to find ways to be creative within
the resources available to remain a pioneer there, so I
appreciate that. I want to talk to you a little bit about
plutonium. As I understand it, plutonium is a critical fuel
source that NASA relies on. Where are we at in terms of the
amount of plutonium available? Are there steps that we need to
take to make sure that we have plutonium available for NASA
going forward?
Mr. Bolden. Congressman, I will get you the exact amounts,
but I think we have adequately funded our portion toward start
up again of plutonium production that would take care of
missions that we, NASA, envision we will be doing in the
foreseeable future. But I will get you the exact answer on
that.
[The information follows:]

Plutonium-238

Plutonium 238 (Pu-238) is a critical fuel source for NASA. The
Department of Energy's stockpile of available Pu-238 is dwindling with
usage and aging with the passage of time. As that material age, it will
become important to blend with new material to maintain its properties
per flight specification. Given NASA's plan for planetary science
missions, it is very important for the United States to re-establish
the domestic production of Pu-238. Congress included $10M in NASA's FY
2012 appropriation, and NASA's FY 2013 budget request includes an
additional $14.547M to begin planning the restart. NASA has been
working closely with the DOE on this effort. DOE has started the
project definition phase of the Pu-238 restart effort. This assessment
is necessary to understand how facilities can be used to begin the
production of Pu-238. We expect that the study will be complete by the
end of calendar year 2013. At the end of project definition phase, we
will have a better estimate of the schedule and cost to reestablish Pu-
238 production and will have demonstrated the key technologies.

Mr. Yoder. Thank you, General. I appreciate your testimony.
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Mr. Fattah. If the gentleman will yield for a minute. This
is in concert with Air Force Space Command and others, right,
that you feel comfortable in terms of where you are, right?
Mr. Bolden. In terms of plutonium production?
Mr. Fattah. Yes.
Mr. Bolden. I am comfortable where we are, other than the
fact that nobody wants to spend money. If you want to ask me
who, I would like to see some other agency pay for it all. That
is not going to happen. So I am satisfied that we are--we have
been asked to pay our fair share. But I will get the exact
numbers on that.
Mr. Yoder. Thank you.
Mr. Bolden. I have got numbers running around in my head,
but I do not want to give you one that may be old.
Mr. Yoder. Thank you, General.
Mr. Chairman, I yield back.
Mr. Wolf. Mr. Culberson.

PLANETARY PROGRAM

Mr. Culberson. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
General Bolden, I am sitting here listening to the
testimony and quietly grieving for our country. I am a naive
Houstonian. I grew up with the Apollo program and got my first
telescope when I was 12. I have been an amateur astronomer
since I was a boy. And NASA has been an important part of my
life, an important part of the life of this country.
And when a major public relations firm that specializes in
public opinion of private companies did a survey for Sean
O'Keefe, they discovered that NASA had the highest positive
perception public image of any Federal Agency, a popularity
rating that was equivalent to that of the Marine Corps. Thank
you again for your service to the country, sir.
I could not agree more strongly with the comments of my
good friend Mr. Schiff that the President's budget is clearly
putting the best days of planetary exploration behind us. It is
visionless. I just grieve for my country. I grieve for NASA to
see the utter lack of vision and have utter lack of interest of
the administration in our magnificent space program. All the
men and women who put their heart and soul into exploring other
worlds, into putting men and women into space need to know that
the Congress stands behind them, even though the President does
not have any interest in our space program. It saddens me to
see this lack of interest in the agency in pursuing the
exploration of the planets.
The Congress is completely committed to support you, sir. I
know you are here carrying a message from the administration.
You are trapped. I know, General, you are not able to really
speak as freely as you would like. I am very reluctant to pick
too much on you because you really are here on behalf of the
administration. I know you are probably not thrilled in your
heart of hearts with this budget proposal. We face a terrible
dilemma as a country because of the size of the debt and the
deficit. The budget which the House is likely to pass, and
necessarily so, is going to have to reduce spending below even
what the President has suggested. Our subcommittee is going to
have terribly difficult choices to make as well.
But there is arm-in-arm agreement among all of us here, you
are among friends, who we are all passionate in our support for
NASA, and for the space program. The planetary program has
taken a substantial and Adam is exactly right, you can say
otherwise, but it does not make it so. It is a devastating cut
to the planetary program.
The administration's budget proposal walks away from
America's leadership role in planetary exploration, it
essentially cancels the Mars program. I think it comes from
OMB. I think it does come from the administration. The
cancelation of the European Space Agency agreement is going to
make the Europeans distrust us deeply in the future. There is
no way that you can say the Mars program survives. There is no
way you can say the planetary program can survive a cut of 21
percent.
I want to circle back to a fundamental fact that Congress
makes the laws; we are the ones that have to set policy. It is
the President's job as chief executive officer to execute the
law, by ensuring that it is carried out.
The law, statutory law, enacted by the Congress and signed
into law by the President on November 18th, just a few short
months ago, says, ``NASA shall implement the recommendations of
the most recent National Research Council planetary decadal
survey and shall follow the decadal survey's recommended
decision rules regarding program implementation, including a
strict adherence to the recommendation that NASA include in a
balanced program a flagship class mission, which may be
executed in cooperation with one or more international
partners, if such mission can be appropriately de-scoped and
all NASA costs for such mission can be accommodated within the
overall funding levels appropriated by Congress.''
The law is unambiguous. This is not optional. This is not a
recommendation of the Congress; it is mandatory. Just as with
the construction of a 130-ton rocket to go beyond low-Earth
orbit. What do you recommend? What should the subcommittee do?
I mean, what amendment should Mr. Schiff and I put together?
What portion of NASA funding should we withhold in order to
ensure you follow the law, as the chairman unfortunately had to
do with the heavy lift launch vehicle?
Mr. Bolden. Congressman, I think we are following the law.
The language that you just read said we shall follow to the
best extent possible the recommendation of the Decadal Survey.
And it also says that we should do the best we can do to
collaborate with our--I do not know whether it said European, I
think it said international partners--if the missions can be
descoped. That is exactly what we are trying to do.
Mr. Culberson. And the missions have----
Mr. Bolden. We are attempting to descope in our discussions
with the Europeans on ExoMars. I will give you an example of
incremental descoping. The original 2018 mission was an
American lander, a European lander. That I knew right away we
could not do. Neither of us could afford that. That we descoped
and said, let's do one lander; you guys can do it; we will
provide the landing system. We are continuing to try to descope
what was the ExoMars mission into a series of strategically
planned incremental missions that will lead to an ultimate
flagship mission to do a sample return. That has not gone away.
We are still working to that.
So two things I will say: Marines are never surrounded in
the first place, so I am not surrounded, I do not feel
surrounded. The second thing is, and I need to make sure people
understand, I am excited about this budget. I do not take
direction from any other agency. I take direction from the
President. And so for people who think that OMB tells me what
to do or OSTP tells me what to do, that does not happen. I go
in and I argue just like any other head of agency or just like
any other Secretary. And we come out of meetings where we are
discussing priorities. Sometimes I win; sometimes I lose. If I
ever won every argument, then something is wrong with our
system of government.
We are not trailing any other Nation in exploration,
contrary to what some people may feel. Every Nation in the
world wants to work with us, to include the Europeans. And I
emphasize again, we have far more that we are doing
cooperatively with other Nations in the world than our Mars
program.
Mr. Culberson. No question. We really sincerely appreciate
your service to the country and appreciate the dilemma that you
find yourself in. But the Decadal Survey language that this
subcommittee enacted and the Congress followed through on
passed by both the House and the Senate and signed by the
President, makes it mandatory that NASA follow the
recommendations of the Decadal Survey. You have got a plan for
planetary exploration; it is called the Decadal Survey.
Congress has formally adopted it as the vision for the future
for the Nation, because that has always been the vision for the
future for the Nation is in the Decadal Survey. The planetary
scientists get together of course and pool their talent and
resources and their opinions and make a series of
recommendations that NASA has always flown, by the way, among
those recommendations the flagship missions in each decade's
Decadal Survey. This is not optional.
Now, I understand about the descoping. That is being done.
The members of this subcommittee, Mr. Schiff and I in
particular, birddogged this pretty relentlessly. We are aware
that the missions have been descoped. Both the Europa mission
and the Mars mission have been descoped, and can be
accomplished within affordable levels within the confines of
what has always been the planetary science budget. So,
obviously, the missions can be descoped. As Mr. Schiff said
funding for NASA has been essentially flat. We are in a tough
budget environment. We are going to work very hard to find
additional funding. What is it that--what does the subcommittee
need to do to make NASA follow the law here.
Mr. Bolden. Support the President's budget request.
Mr. Culberson. But the President's budget request walks
away from----
Mr. Bolden. No, sir.
Mr. Culberson. Well, of course, it does. Mr. Schiff is
right; You can't say it and make it so.
Mr. Bolden. Congressman, I am not trying to make anything.
What I am saying here is we have an effort under way right now
with the Mars planning group that is trying to find a descope--
a method to restructure our Mars robotic and human exploration
program to put synergy in the science and human exploration
that we have not had before, to try to find a number of smaller
missions that we can mount that will accomplish the scientific
objectives that a flagship mission would have done such that
when the funding is available for a flagship mission, we can
mount that speedily and bring samples back to Earth.
That is what we are trying to do. That is the exact
guidance in the terms of reference for the Mars planning group
that is presently beginning to work under the mentorship or the
consultation of Mr.----
Mr. Culberson. That is not consistent with reality, I am
sorry. It is not consistent with reality. The President's
budget walks away from the Mars program as well as Europa--
these are unacceptable cuts to the planetary mission, and I
find this very disheartening.
Mr. Bolden. Congressman, you and I just have to
respectfully agree to disagree. I disagree. I do not think we
are walking away from anything. I do not think the President
has walked away from Mars. The President talks about Mars every
time I go and listen to him talk.
Mr. Culberson. Talking about it does not make it so.
Mr. Bolden. Nothing makes it so except performance. And so,
on August 5th, I think you will see the first level of
performance from NASA on our Mars program. We will land the
Mars Science Laboratory, Curiosity, on the surface. We will
begin to core. We will begin to get samples. We will begin to
analyze those samples. Humans around the world will begin to
see color 3-D images from the surface of Mars. That has never
been done before. That is performance. If I do not do that, you
are not going to want to give me any money. Once I do that,
hopefully, you will be as excited as I am about our Mars
program.
Mr. Culberson. Well, we really appreciate your service to
the Nation, Administrator. We thank you and all the men and
women in NASA. I want all of them who are listening and
following this hearing to know that the members of this
subcommittee are united arm-in-arm in support of America's
space program. We are going to make sure to restore the vision
and the excitement that the program has always had, despite the
best efforts of this administration to throw a wet blanket over
it.

COMMERCIAL CREW PROGRAM

Mr. Wolf. Thank you, Mr. Culberson.
I have a number of questions. I want to kind of spend a
little time on the commercial crew issue, which I think is an
area of a lot of concern with regard to the cost. NASA's
commercial crew development strategy has a total price tag of
about $5 billion. Under current assumptions, that money would
produce crew transportation in 2017 to serve a space station to
which the administration is only currently committed through
2020. From a purely fiscal perspective, why does it make sense
to invest so much money in a capability that might only be used
for three years?
Mr. Bolden. Congressman, we think that, provided the
international partners and the scientific and technological
community of the United States are willing, a space station can
be extended well beyond 2020. We have already completed the
engineering certification. So we are not planning--I mean, I do
not have it funded yet, but I am not planning to end
utilization of the space station in 2020.
Mr. Wolf. Well, you probably will not be here.
Mr. Bolden. But my job is to----
Mr. Wolf. I doubt it.
Mr. Bolden. My job is to facilitate the ability of future
administrators to do the things that I cannot do given the
current constraints. And that is, for example, to be able to
execute a robust flagship mission that will include the outer
planets, whether it is Mars or Jupiter. You know, we have got
Pluto New Horizons on the way. That will give us information we
do not have right now. We have got Juno on the way to Jupiter,
so we will learn things about that planet.
Mr. Wolf. Okay. Coming back to the commercial crew. It
would not be unusual for a program of this complexity to
experience engineering challenges that could cause the schedule
to slip significantly, as we have seen in the commercial cargo
program. How much did the commercial cargo program slip?
Mr. Bolden. Congressman, I think if you look at what the
original assessment was, it is probably a couple of years.
Mr. Wolf. A couple of years. What are the chances that
technical issues could delay a commercial crew capability
beyond 2017, and how does that impact your answer to the
previous question?
Mr. Bolden. When we looked at the date that we thought we
could bring in a commercial crew program, the funding that we
had gave us assurance that we could do it by 2017. So we are
confident that given the things that can go wrong, that we have
anticipated, we think we can bring in a program by 2017.
Mr. Wolf. So you think there are no----
Mr. Bolden. No, sir. I think there are unknown unknowns out
there, and we know about how much time it generally takes to
deal with issues that you don't understand.
Mr. Wolf. Keeping the 2020 date in mind that people are
talking about----
Mr. Bolden. Yes, sir.
Mr. Wolf. Last month's Space News reported that NASA's
Director of Commercial Space Flight Development Phil McAlister
said that the commercial crew program does not really make
sense, if it does not receive the full $830 million request
this year and in the future. Do you agree with that comment? He
said, this is Phil McAlister, who works for you, that the
commercial crew program does not really make sense if it does
not receive the full $830 million request this year and in
future years. Do you agree with that comment?
Mr. Bolden. I am not sure how Phil characterized his
comment or where the quote was taken from, but the commercial
crew program makes all the sense in the world.
Mr. Wolf. I understand that. I just wanted to know if you
agreed. He said it does not really make sense if it does not
receive the full $800 million.
Mr. Bolden. I would not agree with that statement.
Mr. Wolf. Given that the administration is asking for a
commitment of nearly $4 billion more in development subsidies
over the next five years, does it make sense to continue this
program if it does not receive the full funding? So you, in
essence, have kind of answered that.
Mr. Bolden. Congressman, what I am saying is we have
requested an amount that is significant.
Mr. Wolf. I understand that.
Mr. Bolden. But I am just saying, we have agreed, because
of the fiscal challenges, we have agreed to come down on the
amount of money that we requested for commercial crew. Our
original request was in the neighborhood of $1.2 billion to
$1.5 billion annually to support that program when we were
trying to close the gap between shuttle and the availability of
an American capability. We did not get that funding. And as I
told you all last year, if I did not get, I think I had said an
arbitrary floor of $500 million. We did not get that, and so we
are now stuck with a 2017 availability date for commercial
crew.
All I can say is if we are fully funded to the amount
requested by the President, I can bring in commercial crew by
2017. And depending on what the unknown unknowns are, we may be
lucky and we may bring it in sooner than that. But it is too
early to tell. This summer, we will get an opportunity to look
at the proposals from industry on what they see as a system. We
have not looked at systems before. We have looked at modules.
We have looked at launch vehicles but not an integrated system.
Mr. Wolf. Well, I think it is helpful that you did not
agree with Mr. McAlister. That was the point.
Mr. Bolden. I do not agree that any amount of money says
that the program is not worthwhile. That is not true.
Mr. Wolf. What is the primary goal of the commercial crew
program, to close the gap during which we have to rely on the
Russians or to seed as many commercial companies as possible
with development subsidies?
Mr. Bolden. The commercial crew program has multiple
objectives. My number one objective as the NASA administrator
is to put a program into place that supports the International
Space Station, that gives us an American capability to get our
own crews to orbit and not have to be reliant on the Russians.
But also, because I am the NASA administrator and I am
compelled to support the national space policy, it is also to
grow the economy. It is to build a viable commercial space
industry that brings jobs to this Nation and helps increase
funding in our economy, and it is doing that already.
Mr. Wolf. I would think most members up here would agree
that the top priority is closing the gap and not seeding the
companies, but maybe I am just speaking for myself.
During your testimony before the House Science Committee,
Congressman Costello from Illinois asked you about the
commercial crew program and whether it was worth the investment
given the lengthy development. You responded, and this is your
quote, ``we are going to develop a commercial capability for
the benefit of the American economy, but it may not make it in
time to serve the International Space Station''. Did you say
that?
Mr. Bolden. Congressman, I probably said that when we were
talking about--as again, I said I do not like to deal in
conjecture about funding. And I think the question sort of, if
I remember correctly, it talked about what happens if you get
less money? And a statement that I would make if you asked me
the question, if we get less money, the gap is going to widen,
and we probably will not make 2017. You could fund us to a
level that we could not have commercial crew available by 2020,
but that still does not make the program worthless, useless.
You know, if the primary objective of some is to produce or
facilitate the success of a commercial industry that brings
jobs back to this country and feeds the economy, then you could
do that over any period of time. That is not my primary
objective. As I said before, my primary objective as the NASA
administrator is closing the gap so that I do not have to rely
on the Russians to take my crews to the International Space
Station.
Mr. Wolf. You know a lot about this, and I have great
respect for you. I think people say that sometimes when they
are ready to put a dagger in somebody.
Mr. Bolden. That is okay.
Mr. Wolf. No, I do. I think you are a good person. You are
one of the nicest people that I have ever met in this business,
and I appreciate your service to the country. But if we are
talking about 2020, and we are talking about 2017 maybe, then
it may not make it in time to serve. Then when Mr. Schiff is
talking and Mr. Culberson is talking, I tend to feel their
concern because I want America to be number one.
So if we are even reasonably concerned that the commercial
crew program may not deliver in time to serve the International
Space Station, I guess the question somebody would have to ask,
and I am not saying I am opposed to it, but why should
taxpayers spend an additional $4 billion subsidizing companies
to develop these systems when other programs that are
meritorious have to be cut? So is it time to revisit some of
the assumptions about the commercial crew program?
Now, the commercial crew people, and they are probably out
there now, have hired a lot of lobbyists in this town. This is
a big job enhancer for the lobbyists downtown. But that is not
necessarily what is in the best interest of the American
people. So do you have a plan B option for the Space Station?
Mr. Bolden. Do you mean if commercial crew is not available
before the agreed upon time for a station is reached?
Mr. Wolf. Right.
Mr. Bolden. You know, plan B for us is to make sure that we
select more than one alternative this summer to carry forward.
That is our plan B. It is plan A and plan B. If we end up with
one provider, the chances of being able to get to 2017
successfully and affordably is diminished. So the reason we
selected $830 million is because it provides more than one
candidate provider. And I do not even want to talk about the
numbers. The numbers depend on what the level of funding is.
Ideally, you would like to have three or four American
competitors vying for a contract to carry American crew members
to space, such that you would have a minimum of two when you
ended up with who are available to do that. So it is such that
you have redundant reliable routine access to space via
American companies. If we go down to one at the end of the
game, that is okay, but now our redundant backup is where we
are today, and that is Russia, and I do not want to be there.
Mr. Wolf. Well, will we be relieved of the cost of
purchasing Soyuz seats as soon as the first commercial crew
capability enters into service?
Mr. Bolden. As soon as the first commercial crew capability
enters into service, I am done.
Mr. Wolf. So there will be no overlap services?
Mr. Bolden. To my knowledge, we have no plans to go back
and forth once we have American capability.
Mr. Wolf. We have heard there may be an overlap period of
time. So you are saying once this is over, it is over?
Mr. Bolden. Congressman, what you may be referring to is
because we need relief INKSNA, the Iran, North Korea and Syria
Nonproliferation Act, in order to get relief from that, it goes
beyond the period that we anticipate an American capability
will be available. So that may be what people are talking about
when you say will there be overlap. The INKSNA waiver will
overlap the time that American capability becomes available.
But I have no intention of using Soyuz once I have an American
carrier that can get us to ISS.
Mr. Wolf. How much is it per trip?
Mr. Bolden. $450 million per crew member right now with
Soyuz.
Mr. Wolf. $450 million.
Mr. Bolden. To train a crew member and get them to the
International Space Station. And that is money that is going to
Russia, that is taxpayer money going to Russia, not going to an
American company, not going to jobs in the United States of
America, not going to any of your districts. Because unless
somebody there is contracting as a subcontractor to Roscosmos
or to Energia. It is not coming here.
Mr. Wolf. I think there is a misunderstanding. That is a
year; that is not per seat?
Mr. Bolden. Well, it is a year that we paid them.
Mr. Wolf. What is it per seat?
Mr. Bolden. I think it is $63 million per seat.
Mr. Wolf. And is the price locked in?
Mr. Bolden. It is locked in for now. But there will come a
time if we do not close the gap----
Mr. Wolf. When is it locked in until?
Mr. Bolden. Congressman, let me get back to you. I think it
is 2016, but I will verify that.
[The information follows:]

Crew Transportation, Rescue And Related Services

In March 2011, NASA signed a $753M modification to the current
International Space Station contract with the Russian Federal Space
Agency for crew transportation, rescue and related services from 2014
through June 2016 (through Soyuz landings in spring 2016). The firm-
fixed price modification covers comprehensive Soyuz support, including
all necessary training and preparation for launch, flight operations,
landing and crew rescue of long-duration missions for 12 individual
space station crewmembers.

Mr. Wolf. The administration believes that maximizing
competition is a cost-control measure. However, it also ensures
that we will spend hundreds of millions of dollars on companies
who will never take crew to the International Space Station,
either because they fail to develop a capability or because
there is not enough demand for International Space Station
transportation to award multiple contracts. How do we know the
value of this competition is worth the added cost of adding so
many firms who will not make it to the end? Could adequate
competition be provided through down selecting to two companies
and maintaining the option of using the Soyuz services?
Mr. Bolden. Congressman, our intent is to eventually select
two or more, as you say. I do not think there is any
competitive advantage, price advantage or schedule advantage to
selecting one at this time, or to selecting two before we have
the proposals from industry so that we can tell who is serious,
who is following the design requirements that we have laid out
and provided to everybody, and that will take us awhile, 15 to
20 months.
Mr. Wolf. We defeated the Nazis in four years, so is there
no effort of making this basically a wartime proposal bringing
together the very best minds in the four companies or the three
companies or the two companies now, knowing that everyone would
get something and be a participant in some future? But, the end
result is like musical chairs, there is only going to be one
that gets to sit down on the chair. So there is no
consideration of bringing the companies together.
Mr. Bolden. Congressman, we have encouraged companies to
collaborate to the greatest extent possible. If you look at--
there is one potential entrant that is a collaboration of an
American company and a European company. I think there is one
that is potentially a collaboration between two American
companies. I cannot mandate that the companies come together.
And I referred you to the, you know to one of our American
companies. I am not even sure if they are planning to propose.
But I felt it would be prudent to have someone from industry
say what their thinking was about collaboration. And I think--I
am not sure what he told you, but what he has told me and what
others have told me is the time to do that has passed, that
nobody wants to come together right now.
Mr. Wolf. Okay. I have a lot other questions, but I will go
to Mr. Fattah.
Mr. Fattah. Administrator, I think a number of things. One,
I think the administration has set the Nation on a course
through commercial cargo and crew that will benefit us for
decades to come in terms of reduced costs and building a
commercial space capacity that will mean jobs and the like.
The resistance to it is notable. You know, the idea that we
would not believe that American industry has the ability and
the ingenuity to take on something that the government has been
doing on a regular basis, on a routine basis, to shuttle
flights. I do not really understand. I know that I think it can
be done.
And I do note that Virgin Galactic has just sold their
500th seat in terms of space tourism. So the idea that private
companies cannot do this and that we cannot use competition as
a way to drive down costs, I think we can, so I am a big
believer.
I do agree with the chairman, however, that what we see in
the private sector and some of the most successful work that is
done, at some point competition gets you to a certain point,
and then cooperation gets you to the kind of gold medal. And so
there will be a time in which through this process, I believe,
some of these companies will work together. I think we got to
get the politics out of our space exploration efforts.
I totally agree with my colleague from California about
these cuts in planetary science. But when the gentleman from
Texas brings in these attacks on the administration, I think it
is nonproductive. What we need to be focusing on is the fact
that we have an administration that even in the toughest of
times is prepared to commit American tax dollars to our
continued global leadership in space.
And we may have differences about how we ought to proceed.
I have differences with my wife on almost any day I want to go
out and play golf, that she thinks I should be doing something
on her list. So there are going to be disagreements. But what I
think that the chairman is trying to do is move us on the
substance of these issues. There is no politics in our
competition with emerging countries like China and others. This
is not between Democrats or Republicans here; this is about the
United States of America and our leadership in the world. And I
know that the gentleman from Texas has really helped lead the
way in terms of space and does not mean to bring this kind of
down to a partisan thing.
The President is committed. The only difference that I can
figure out is that he wants to use American companies through
commercial crew as one of the important issues here, and that
rather than go back to the moon, he wants it to go to Mars,
right. He wants NASA to return to its mandate of exploring, you
know like really pushing the envelope here.
So I think we ought to work together. And we can fully
disagree with the administration or anyone else, but I think we
should keep the politics out of this as best as we possibly
can. This is not an area where I understand why we would have
politics in it. So I want to thank you for your work.

EDUCATION BUDGET

And I do want to ask you about the education budget. One of
the hits in your proposal is in this education frame. And I am
very concerned about this. One of the reasons for NASA, ever
since President Kennedy's speech at Rice University in 1962,
was to inspire more engineers and scientists. And so I think we
ought to be doing more, not less. I know that you are trying to
integrate educational activities throughout the agency, but I
would like you to speak to what these proposals will mean from
the education budget.
Mr. Bolden. Congressman, what the reductions mean in the
education budget is that in the classic manner, we would reach
fewer schools or fewer museums or fewer students if we did
business the way we have always done it. What we are trying to
do is we have an education design team in place that is looking
at revamping the way that we conduct our educational programs.
Leland Melvin, who is the head of education for me, co-
chairs what is called CoSTEM or Cooperation in STEM Education,
that is under the auspices of the Office of Science and
Technology Policy. And there are representatives from every
agency of government that has educational programs. We are
trying to find synergies among our programs such that we spend
less but we achieve more. We now are demanding metrics, what I
call measurable results from what you do. Unfortunately, two
years ago, I couldn't tell you what was accomplished from my
education budget. I could tell you that we reached 10,000 kids,
but I can reach 10,000 kids out here on the street, and I have
no impact on them whatsoever. Am I giving them something that
goes into their brain that makes them want to get into science,
technology, engineering and math fields? And that is what we
are trying to do now.
I have to tell you, a program that I helped introduce
called the Summer of Innovation, I now have questions as to
whether that is the way that I want to continue to do things in
the future now that I have begun to work more with industry.
And I find that they like that idea, and they can do the same
thing on their dime. It may be that I find ways to collaborate
with them. So there are untapped ways that we can collaborate
with industry as well as other agencies to get more bang for
our buck, if you will. So I am not concerned presently that the
impact of our education program is being decreased.
Mr. Fattah. I want to thank you. And I am concerned a
little bit about it and will explore with the staff a little
bit more.
Mr. Bolden. I understand.
Mr. Fattah. But I do want to thank you for your personal
commitment. I was over at a school here in D.C., and you had
been there the week before me over at Cornerstone. And it was
great that you had been there, and I saw the pictures of you
interacting with the kids. So thank you very much.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Wolf. Thank you. We are going to go into a couple other
areas. We have a lot of other questions on aeronautics.
But before we do, I just ask you, because you are going to
reach a certain point when it cannot be done, to bring the
companies in and see we are not taking competition out. We beat
the Nazis by coming together. And we are in a war. It is a
different type of a war, but it is a struggle for dominance
with regard to America being the dominant power in space. You
want that as much as anybody else.
Mr. Bolden. Yes, sir.
Mr. Wolf. But I think it would be helpful to bring them
together and give them the opportunity. Because some are going
to get zero, when they could get all for one and one for all.
So you might just do that.
Now, in checking around, there will be a point when people
have so many investments and different processes that cannot be
connected, and therefore, it is too late. But I would ask you
to look at that. At least give them an opportunity to express
whether or not they could. And by getting any savings that we
could would also allow us to continue the Mars program and
programs like that. But I would ask you to do that.

AERONAUTICS BUDGET PROPOSALS

The administration says it places a high priority on R&D
programs that develop and transition technical innovations from
Federal agencies into industry. You had mentioned that earlier
with regard to Boeing. Your aeronautics program has developed a
dozen new technologies and processes that are used in aviation
manufacturing and airline operations today and is at work on
others that will emerge in the next five to ten years. And yet
the aeronautics program is slated for a decrease in the budget
request. Why isn't your program being considered a budget
priority like other R&D programs with direct ties to
manufacturing and job growth, since you mentioned job growth
with regard to the commercial crew?
Mr. Bolden. Congressman, because we now have a Space
Technology Program and an Office of Chief Technologist, which
we did not have before, we are able to take some of the
programs that used to be in the aeronautics portfolio, for
example, hypersonics. The entry and descent landing that
Congressman Schiff mentioned. Entry and descent landing up
until was carried as a part of the aeronautics budget, and it
is now in the Office of Chief Technologist because that is more
in keeping with technology development to support a planetary
mission, a Mars mission, if you will.
We are also collaborating with other agencies to find out,
because some of our aeronautics research does not benefit NASA.
It benefits the Nation. It benefits the Department of Defense.
And so we are trying to say, okay, if this is something that is
good for the Nation, we need to look at different ways to
collaborate on the funding. NASA should not pay the whole bill
for this particular capability if it is not for civil space.
And we are doing that. In my meetings with senior leaders in
DOD and senior leaders in DARPA and other places, we are trying
to decide how we better appropriate the funding, responsibility
for funding for some of our aeronautics programs, such that we
can do more with what we have.
Mr. Wolf. The aerospace industry has consistently run trade
surpluses for the United States, with a surplus in 2010 of $60
billion. A big driver of these surpluses has been the export of
aviation technology, much of which had its roots in research
done by NASA's aeronautics program years ago. By pulling back
from the aeronautics program now, do you run the risk of
failing to produce the technical innovations that will fuel our
exports in the next decade and beyond, and can we sustain
America's leadership in aerospace technology with decreased
investments in aeronautics research?
Mr. Bolden. Congressman, what we are trying to do actually
is we are not pulling back from aeronautics. I think in many
cases, what I am asking them to do is look at programs that we
have had on board for many years that may have reached the
maximum return on investment, and what are some of the
innovative things that we should be doing now? We are involved
in, for example, water ice testing to help industry to prevent
engine shutdowns, undesired engine shutdowns at altitude and
clear air because they accumulate clear ice on the stators in
an engine and cause it to flame out. Those are important things
that we do. And we were not doing that before.
We have reconfigured a wind tunnel at the Glenn Research
Center in order to be able to do that kind of testing. So
gradually what I am asking them to do is look at new things
that we can do in the portfolio that bring direct return on
investment to American industry. We are trying to do exactly
what you say.
Mr. Wolf. The budget request essentially eliminates your
hypersonic research program. What is the effect of that? And
will DOD pick that up?
Mr. Bolden. That is a question that I am asking. And again,
I hate to keep going back to collaboration with Secretary
Donley and Dr. Dugan over at DARPA. But when the decision was
made that we were no longer going to fund mainly air breathing
hypersonic research, because we retain what we called entry and
descent landing portion of hypersonics. There are a number of
different things. Air breathing hypersonic research is critical
for the Nation because it is critical for defense. That is not
something that the civil space community, at least some people
do not believe the civil space community has a need for right
now. But we have the expertise. So what we are trying to
collaborate with DOD and DARPA and others on is, okay, you pay
for it, I will continue to do the work, so we will do it as
reimbursable work. That is underway. It is just too early to
tell.
Mr. Wolf. Did the country make a mistake by canceling the
SST years ago?
Mr. Bolden. Congressman, I don't know. We keep trying to go
back to supersonic transport. I think we will get there one of
these days.
Mr. Wolf. And what is your opinion? You were a pilot at
that time.
Mr. Bolden. As a pilot, I would say, yes, we made a
mistake. But that is a--purely pulling it out.
Mr. Wolf. I respect your opinion.
Mr. Bolden. My humble opinion as someone who is totally
uninformed of where the SST program was at the time----
Mr. Wolf. It was flying. It came into Dulles.
Mr. Bolden. It is easy for us to go back and point out
mistakes that we made in terminating programs.
Mr. Wolf. I was just wondering. And that is why I was
hoping you would tell me what the lesson is. Did we miss an
opportunity or was that a good decision?
Mr. Bolden. In hindsight, because I am not informed, but
based on what I know now, it probably was a good decision at
the time because NASA is now involved in research to help
minimize the effect of sonic booms on communities.
Anytime you go supersonic like a supersonic transport had
to do, you disturb communities unless you can find a way to
minimize the impact of that sound wave traveling to Earth. We
are a lot smarter today than we were back then. We have not
abandoned it. We are coming back to it. In the future, I think
you are going to see a successful supersonic transport.
Mr. Wolf. Was that in the late '70s when that was
abolished?
Mr. Bolden. I will have to get you that information.
Mr. Wolf. No. That is okay.
Mr. Bolden. But the research we are doing now at the Glenn
Research Center, Langley, and mainly at Dryden, the flight
test, we have actually demonstrated that we can minimize the
impact of sonic booms. But that is in its formative stage. We
are not there yet. But that is the kind of new research we need
to do in our aeronautics support portfolio.
Mr. Wolf. The National Research Council, which is part of
the National Academy, just released a report saying that NASA
has not been sufficiently investing in aeronautics flight
research and that this will inhibit NASA's technology from
being readily accepted in the marketplace. How do you respond
to that? This is a leading question, but should NASA spend more
on flight research even if it means reducing other priorities
as the NRC recommends? Do you respect the NRC?
Mr. Bolden. I have high respect for the NRC.
Mr. Wolf. Who is the chairman?
Mr. Bolden. I will get that information for you, sir.
I don't remember who the chairman of the study was, but in
talking with Mr. Jaiwon Shin, who heads my aeronautics mission
directorate, we do not fully agree with all of the findings of
the committee. In principle, we do. And where I agreed that I
just alluded to you is we do need to take a look at our
portfolio and abandon programs that have been on our plate for
years, that continue to give marginal return.
Russ Harris.
Mr. Wolf. Did you read the report saying that NASA has not
been sufficiently investing in aeronautics flight?
Mr. Bolden. Yes, sir. That is why I am saying I disagree in
some respects with the findings of the report.
I agree that we need to be much more aggressive in looking
for new technologies that we can develop that will bring
speedier results. One of them that they gave is supersonic--is
mitigation of supersonic--of sonic booms. We are working on
that.
There were a number of things that they called out that
NASA should be doing that we are doing. So that is why I say I
don't fully agree with the report. They didn't fully appreciate
the research that is presently going on in NASA.
Mr. Wolf. Will NASA be doing a rebuttal to that?
Mr. Bolden. As a general rule to an NRC report, if we are
asked, we write a comment. And we will respond, because our
aeronautics mission directorate has already been meeting with
the committee, the people who delivered the report, because we
asked for it. So we will have to go back and respond to them
and say, okay, thanks very much, here is what we are going to
do, here is what we can't do, and here is what we need to think
about. So we are going to try to do this.

CHINA'S SPACE ACTIVITIES

Mr. Wolf. Have you read China's five-year plan for space
activities issued in December? And, if so, what is your
assessment of the likelihood that they will achieve the goals
laid out in the plan, especially with respect to human space
flight?
Mr. Bolden. Congressman, I am remiss. I have not read it
since you told me to stay away from bilateral activities.
Mr. Wolf. You can read books about it.
Let me say, I love the Chinese people. I probably meet with
more Chinese people than any other Member of the House, any
other Member. I probably have a deeper and greater relationship
with more Chinese than any other Member of the House. Period.
That includes the members of the International Relations
Committee and wherever they are.
We had a whole group that came over here in February. All
of the dissidents that come. I love the Chinese people. They
are marvelous people.
So you can read about it--in fact, if you want to have some
of the books that I read, I can send them over to you to read.
That doesn't mean that you can't read or talk. This is not
against the Chinese people.
Mr. Bolden. Yes, sir.
Mr. Wolf. My concern is the people who have the Chinese
bishops under house arrest or have the pastors in jail or have
Liu Xiaobo, the Nobel Prize winner, in jail or have his wife
under house arrest or are spying against it. The Chinese people
are wonderful. It is that little group.
Mr. Bolden. Yes, sir.
Mr. Wolf. So you haven't read it. You should. I would like
to get your comments on.
If the Chinese were to successfully achieve the goals of
that plan--but since you have not read it, I will submit this
question for the record.
Mr. Bolden. I will take a look, and I will give you an
answer. But, congressman, if I can, I will say, you know, I do
know vaguely what their objectives are, and they have different
objectives. They focus on the Moon, and we focus on Mars.
Mr. Wolf. My question that I will submit is, if the Chinese
were to successfully achieve the goals of that plan, how would
the quality and quantity of their achievements compare to what
NASA expects to do over the same time period? And what will our
relative position in terms of space leadership at the end of
the five years be?
[The information follows:]

China's Five-Year Space Plan

It is difficult to compare China's proposed space program
objectives with NASA's likely accomplishments over the next 5 years.
The current development path of China's emerging space program appears
to mirror the progress made by the United States in the 1960s and
1970s, Advances will potentially be marked by historic technological
milestones, such as demonstrating short-term habitation of an orbiting
space laboratory, completing a regional GNSS constellation and perhaps
even landing a robotic rover on the moon, but China's level of
technological sophistication remains behind that of the U.S. today. In
contrast, as a mature space program, NASA's likely achievements in the
next 5 years will reflect more consistent innovation and progress
across a broader range of space exploration and science activities that
currently include dozens of complex active and planned human and
robotic missions throughout the solar system.
The NASA FY 2013 budget request and associated out-year budgets
will allow the Agency's human spaceflight, exploration, science, and
aeronautics programs to maintain their pre-eminent status at the top of
global science, engineering, and technology. The International Space
Station will continue its strong role in showcasing the advantages of
long-term international human presence in space for microgravity-based
research. NASA's efforts to foster commercial crew and cargo
capabilities to low-Earth orbit (LEO) will allow U.S. industry to
conduct many of the same activities being undertaken by the Government
of China for the very first time. In parallel, NASA will continue to
focus its efforts on the development of the next generation of heavy-
lift launch vehicle and a multipurpose crew vehicle for use beyond LEO.
NASA's planned upcoming science missions will expand our existing
global Earth observation system and push the boundaries of our
knowledge in space science.

Mr. Bolden. I will look at the plan, but I can tell you I
can almost guarantee that, after I read it, I will tell you
that the quality of what they produce will be dwarfed by what
we do. They have a long way to go to be as capable as we are.
While we should not rest on our laurels, one of the reasons
why we need to continue to fund technology development is so
that we stay way ahead. As we decrease our funding in
technology development, we will still be ahead, but the gap
will close. I can tell you that without reading the report.
That is the same for any nation.
I use the Tiger Woods analogy. Tiger, his game is still
good, but when you look at what other players have done in the
gym and other places based on his example, the world is
catching up. That is the same way we are. We are really good,
but if we stay out of the gym, if we don't put sufficient funds
into technology development, into education, as you have
mentioned, into commercial crew, others will catch up with us.
Mr. Wolf. One of the major goals outlined in the Chinese
space plan is to increase international cooperation. Of course,
you are limited in the amount of bilateral activity you can
engage in with them, but you can and do participate in
multilateral activities. Is it your expectation that NASA's
multilateral engagement with China will increase? And, if so,
in what context and for what purposes?
Mr. Bolden. Congressman, I don't presently see that any of
our activity with China will increase in the next year or two
because we just don't have any discussions that are going on.
As I told you in my phone call after the heads of agency
meeting, we do know that our international partners are
actively engaged on a bilateral basis with the Chinese.
Hopefully, we will benefit by whatever they do with the
Chinese, but we do not have any intention of cooperating or
participating.
Mr. Wolf. Good. And our international partners will share
with you?
Mr. Bolden. They have been very candid. The transparency
among the international partners has been incredible. None of
them have tried to hide the level of their relationship with
the Chinese, and I don't expect that they will. They know our
situation. They tell us as much as they can.
Mr. Wolf. Good.
Last month, the Defense Intelligence Agency chief, General
Ron Burgess, testified before the Senate and said, ``China's
ability to track and identify satellites is enhanced by
technologies from China's manned and lunar programs as well as
technologies and methods developed to detect and track space
debris. Beijing rarely acknowledges direct military
applications of its space program and refers to nearly all
satellite launches as scientific or civil in nature.''
He also noted, ``In recent years, more cases of economic
espionage and theft of dual use and military technology have
uncovered pervasive Chinese collection efforts.''
Do you agree with General Burgess' assessment of China's
efforts to acquire U.S. space technology?
Mr. Bolden. Congressman, I don't have the advantage that he
does, but my guess would be yes.
Mr. Wolf. Have you been out there for the FBI briefing?
Mr. Bolden. I have not had a briefing recently. I have been
trying to get one lately. But we are working on it.
Mr. Wolf. I would ask that we help set that up.
Mr. Bolden. They are perfectly willing. It has been my
schedule that has been the hold-up.
Mr. Wolf. It is pretty important.
Mr. Bolden. I intend to do that.
I would say, dual use technologies and dual use things in
general, everything is a two-edged sword. There is nothing
today that we do that doesn't have an up and a downside.
Prior collaboration with the Chinese, for example, was in
the area of debris mitigation and debris detection. Everybody
wants to know how to find stuff out there. That has a bad side.
In terms of certain communities in this country, that is not
good--for people to be able to detect everything out there.
So there are things that I can't do that I am asked not to
do because they would put our national security at risk. So is
there a risk, yes, there is. But we do need to know what they
are doing.
I think the area where you and I respectfully disagree--and
we have discussed this at length--my belief is it is only
through collaboration and engagement that I am able to know
better what they are doing.
But I rely right now on other agencies helping us
understand that. I rely on my international partners helping us
to understand where they are technologically, and that is why I
can say with confidence that, even if their five-year plan
works, yes, they are like all of the kids chasing Tiger Woods,
but we are still--we are okay.

COMPUTER SECURITY

Mr. Wolf. Speaking of engagement, NASA's Inspector
General--different types of engagement--recently testified that
over the past two years NASA had more than 5,000 computer
security incidents resulting in the installation of malicious
software on or unauthorized access to NASA systems. Do you have
a sense of how this compares to experiences in other major
agencies?
Mr. Bolden. Congressman, I just had a meeting with my IG
yesterday, and I am not privy to the report that is presently
ongoing. But I do know--what he told me, and I will only repeat
that, is that my folks say we are woefully deficient compared
to other agencies, and that is something that concerns me
greatly.
You will see from the day that the NASA IG was here
testifying with my chief information officer, we have put
things into place. We now have a policy that I am about to sign
out that will require us to encrypt all portable IT devices.
That is iPads, laptops, smartphones.
Do I find it incredible that we weren't doing that? Yes, I
do. Whose fault is that? It is mine. I should have known that.
Mr. Wolf. That is why I think it would be helpful to do the
briefing. China was the result of most of these impacts.
Mr. Bolden. Congressman, I take your word.
Mr. Wolf. I will go with you, again. But it is really
important.
Mr. Bolden. You have more to do with your time.
Mr. Wolf. No, I will be glad to do that. Mr. Fattah is
going to come next week. But I think when you go out there and
see it, you will be like, wow, I can't believe it.
Mr. Bolden. I haven't talked with the DIA or anybody else,
but my guess is that the vast majority of the hits that we get
are kids. They are hackers who are doing it because they can.
They want to demonstrate that they are better than we are. They
don't think what they are doing is malicious, but it is
malicious. Because as soon as somebody finds a way to break
into something, it gets out. So we have to find ways to protect
ourselves against our own people who do not have any malicious
intent.
Encrypting our devices is one way to do it. We guard
against anything getting to the International Space Station or
satellites on orbit because that is heavily encrypted as
commands are sent, so we are comfortable there.
Mr. Wolf. This may be more than kids, though. Your IG
raised a number of incidents--thefts of laptops containing
Space Station control codes, unauthorized access by hackers to
mission-critical JPL systems, and the electronic theft of
employee credentials. So I guess the question is, have you
fully mitigated the losses associated with the events discussed
in that testimony? And I saw that Senator Nelson raised that.
Mr. Bolden. Congressman, we are making every effort we can.
We are expediting our efforts to take mitigating actions
against the things that have occurred that we don't want to
reoccur.
Mr. Wolf. Well, the IG said that 75 percent of the cyber-
related recommendations made by his office have been
successfully closed. For the remaining recommendations, are
they outstanding simply because NASA is still in the process of
implementing them or is it because you don't agree with them?
Mr. Bolden. Oh, there is nothing that I don't agree with.
The main reason that they are not fully implemented yet, cost,
difficulty of accomplishing it. And a discussion the IG and I
had yesterday was he assumed that to encrypt all of the
equipment under his responsibility would be very simple. He is
the IG, and he has people all over the country, and he should
just tell them to do it.
However, each of his people is resident at a NASA center
that has its own IT system and system of control. That is
another thing. That is a governance issue that may not seem
like a big deal, but it is a governance issue that I am working
on right now, and that is to make sure that my chief
information officer has oversight of these types of issues
across the agency. That has not been the case before. In the
millions of dollars that are available for IT and IT security,
the chief information officer only has control of a very small
portion of that, and that may need to change.
And I would correct one thing. ISS was never in jeopardy. I
tried to emphasize that. There were no commands that could be
sent that were not sent. So ISS has never been in jeopardy. The
interference we got with Terra and some other satellites, their
control has never been in question.
Mr. Wolf. Rather than going into the deep question, but
NASA's CIO lacks authority to impose security policies. Would
you want the committee to carry language?
Mr. Bolden. No, sir. I do not.
Mr. Wolf. But we urge you to address the problem. Do you
want us to direct you?
Mr. Bolden. Congressman, you have directed me. When it
became known to me the deficiencies we had, that is direction
enough.
Mr. Wolf. OK. Could I ask, please, if the CIO would also
join you then out there at the briefing?
Mr. Bolden. Sure.
Mr. Wolf. OK. I have a few more. Do you want me to go, Mr.
Fattah?
Mr. Fattah. Please. I am done.

SPACE SHUTTLE TRANSITION AND RETIREMENT

Mr. Wolf. According to the budget request, fiscal year 2013
will be the last year of shuttle close-out payments. However,
the request is predicated on the assumption that NASA will be
able to meet a substantial pension liability payment later this
year. If the liability is unexpectedly large, some shuttle
retirement work may have to be deferred. What is NASA's most
current estimate for its pension liability needs? If this
estimate turns out to be correct, can you stay on schedule for
completing shuttle closeout?
Mr. Bolden. Congressman, we feel confident we will stay on
schedule for shuttle closeout. The funding that is required to
take care of the USA pensions is in place; and the final
determination, as your information says, is partially dependent
on where the market is on the day the final payments are made.
But we are okay financially in order to be able to meet that
obligation on the part of the government, and hopefully we will
not have this discussion after this fiscal year.

NEGOTIATING WITH RUSSIA FOR SPACE STATION TRANSPORTATION

Mr. Wolf. OK. On the Space Station again, NASA will need to
begin negotiation soon to increase the number of Soyuz seats it
has purchased to maintain International Space Station access
while waiting for commercial capability. How are you estimating
the number of additional seats you need to procure when you do
not know when the commercial capability will become available?
Mr. Bolden. Congressman, what we have done is we have made
an assumption that we will have private American commercial
capability available in 2017. So we know how many seats we are
going to require through 2016. So that is the way we base our
requests for funding for payments to Roscosmos.
I will add, because it goes back to a question that I was
asked earlier, we are working within the Administration on the
language that will come in that will request the appropriate
INKSNA extension that will support our requirement for
additional Soyuz seats that will take us through 2017.
Mr. Wolf. The additional Soyuz purchases for crew rotation
and rescue will require an extension of the exception to the
Iran, North Korea, Syria Nonproliferation Act?
Mr. Bolden. Yes, sir.
Mr. Wolf. Last time that was done in an appropriation bill.
Do you have a legislative strategy to seek that waiver? How are
you going to do that?
Mr. Bolden. I will take that for action and get back to
you.
[The information follows:]

Iran, North Korea, Syria Non-Proliferation Act

Some modification of the Iran, North Korea, Syria Non-proliferation
Act (INKSNA) provisions will likely be required for the continued
operation of ISS and other space programs after 2016. The
Administration plans to propose appropriate provisions and looks
forward to working with the Congress on their enactment.

Mr. Bolden. Right now, as far as I know, we are going back.
Because the State Department has concerns, the whole
Administration has concerns about extension of INKSNA, and that
is being worked through the interagency process.
Mr. Wolf. Because Russia is aiding the Syrians, as you
know. The Syrians are killing their own citizens.
I am jumping around a little bit.
Mr. Bolden. Yes, sir. And I will say, because Russia is a
partner on the International Space Station, we will always be
reliant on the Russians for certain aspects of operation of the
International Space Station.

RESEARCH ON THE SPACE STATION

Mr. Wolf. Sure.
The cost of maintaining the International Space Station and
transporting astronauts to it won't be worthwhile if you don't
do a better job of maximizing the research potential. Out of
the $3 billion that we spend annually on International Space
Station, only $229 million is for research, and more than half
of that is for supporting infrastructure and administrative
costs. Are our investments in the International Space Station
research and the returns on those investments enough to justify
the continuing expense of running the station?
Mr. Bolden. Sir, there are a couple of things there. There
is a governing body called the Mission Control Board that is
subordinate to the heads of agency, the five of us who oversee
the International Space Station from the five member agencies.
Bill Gerstenmaier, who heads my human exploration program,
chairs the MCB, and they are looking at ways to reduce the
ongoing operational costs for station. Simultaneously, what we
are doing in the United States is we have awarded a contract to
an organization called CASIS.
Mr. Wolf. That hasn't worked out very well?
Mr. Bolden. It is going through growing pains, but we are
confident it will work.
Mr. Wolf. What are some of the others that applied?
Mr. Bolden. I will get back to you. Bechtel I know was one
of the competitors. I will get back to you on who the others
were.
[The information follows:]

International Space Station National Laboratory

On April 1, 2011 NASA received the proposals from the following:
Center for the Advancement of Science in Space (CASIS),
submitted under the auspices of Space Florida
Columbia National Lab (CNL) from the University of
Missouri
Space Laboratory Associates (SLA), a joint venture between
Battelle Memorial Institute and the Universities Space Research
Association
International Space Station Institute (ISSI) from the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Mr. Bolden. But the intent of that, the concept, was to
take NASA out of the business of funding all research and
putting it in the hands of an independent, nongovernmental
organization that would go out and recruit people and
organizations for research on the International Space Station,
and the funds that they earn will come from the investors and
not from NASA.
So I would not pay--this is just a fictional number--I
would not pay CASIS $200 million to just pay us through to
researchers. I will pay them a management fee of $15 million a
year to take care of running the International Space Station.
They will go out and as they bring business in--so it is a
business proposition for them. They go out and recruit, manage,
and select the participants. And the funds that come into them
replace what NASA would give them to fund researchers.
Mr. Wolf. It doesn't seem like they have done very well so
far.
Mr. Bolden. They have just started, and I am not trying to
defend anything.
Mr. Wolf. I just heard they lost their top person.
Mr. Bolden. Their executive director did resign.
Mr. Wolf. They just started. That is kind of like the
captain of the ship leaving before----
Mr. Bolden. But they have a new captain. They are going
through growing pains. We are not telling them what to do. We
have provisions in place. They have milestones that they have
to meet. And we have sent them or we are in the process of
sending them another letter to remind them of the milestones
and remind them of the plan, and then we will see how they go.
Mr. Wolf. NASA seems to be utilizing its own International
Space Station research space, but the National Lab portion of
the space station is underused. If you looked at it from--and
this is not a very good analogy--but if there were 50
apartments open for lease there that you could be leasing out
to the drug companies to find a cure for cancer or for
Alzheimer's or autism, how many of the apartments are leased?
That is not a very good way to ask it, but how much capacity is
being used and how much is still available for people to come
in?
Mr. Bolden. Congressman, quite a bit of the capacity is
being used, but there is room for people to come in, and that
is the purpose for bringing in an outside organization, to try
to find people that we would not find, to try to find
organizations that do different types of research than we did.
Mr. Wolf. How many work for them?
Mr. Bolden. For CASIS?
Mr. Wolf. Yes.
Mr. Bolden. I will get that information for you. I don't
know how large they are.
[The information follows:]

Center for the Advancement of Science in Space

As of March 2012, CASIS employed 19 people full time, in addition
to some part-time employees and consultants. The estimated operating
full-time head count will approach 36 for the next couple of years,
with potential growth to around 50.

Mr. Wolf. Was that a legislative decision or was that a
decision that you all made?
Mr. Bolden. I will find out for sure, but I think it was
collaboration between us and the Congress. We always wanted to
have an independent entity, a nongovernmental entity. I will
take it for the record to find out whether there was
legislation involved in the stand-up of the organization.
[The information follows:]

International Space Station as a National Laboratory

In the NASA Authorization Act of 2005 (P.L. 109-155), Congress
designated the U.S. segment of the ISS as a National Laboratory, and
directed the Administrator to seek to increase the utilization of the
ISS by other Federal entities and the private sector.
In the NASA Authorization Act of 2010 (P.L. 111-267), Congress
directed that the Agency enter into a cooperative agreement with a not-
for-profit organization to manage the activities of the ISS National
Laboratory. To this end, NASA issued a cooperative agreement notice on
February 14, 2011, and on August 31, 2011, the Agency finalized a
cooperative agreement with the Center for the Advancement of Science in
Space (CASIS) to manage the portion of the ISS that operates as a U.S.
National Laboratory.

Mr. Wolf. Now, you fund them, correct?
Mr. Bolden. Yes, sir.
Mr. Wolf. So how do you balance their need for an
independent board and executive leadership with your ability to
ensure that their funds are well managed?
Mr. Bolden. Because we have oversight. They are just like
any other contractor. As I mentioned, they have milestones that
they have to meet. They have to present their plan.
Mr. Wolf. If you had to give them a grade now, what grade
would you give them?
Mr. Bolden. It is too early to give them a grade.
Mr. Wolf. Quite honestly, when I went to Patterson
Elementary School in southwest Philadelphia we got an interim
grade. What would Mrs. Patterson give them? A ``C'' or an
``A''? Where would their grading be now?
Mr. Bolden. Congressman, I would have to consult.
Mr. Wolf. The reason I ask--and I am not going to make you
give them a grade then if you don't want to give them a grade--
but it is $100 billion that we spent on the ISS, and I think we
all have an obligation to the American taxpayer to make sure
that it is utilized.
Mr. Bolden. Yes, sir. And that is our intent. In fact, we
are so intent on having it be successful because what we would
then like to do is expand its capability to manage not just the
U.S. segment but perhaps the entire space station. That would
be ideal, because that would help all of the partners get their
costs down, and that is what everybody is looking for.
Mr. Wolf. How many people do you think they are going to
be? When they get up to full strength, what will they be?
Mr. Bolden. Congressman, I will have to get you that.
[The information follows:]

Center for the Advancement of Science in Space

Mr. Wolf. Where are they based?
Mr. Bolden. They are based out of Florida.
Mr. Wolf. Where in Florida?
Mr. Bolden. Cape Canaveral.

WALLOPS FLIGHT FACILITY

Mr. Wolf. Wallops Island. I understand you visited Wallops
Island for the dedication of the new Horizontal Integration
Facility last year. Virginia is very excited about using this
facility and the upcoming test flight of Orbital Sciences'
rocket and subsequent launches to the International Space
Station. The Virginia commercial space flight authority is
currently conducting an RFI to look at bringing a heavier
rocket to Wallops to increase use of the launch site.
I have two questions: One, can you tell me if and how
funding for NASA's 21st Century Launch Complex program is being
used at Wallops to support future development, and what other
steps is NASA taking to encourage a more robust use of Wallops?
Mr. Bolden. Congressman, 21st century space launch does not
include specific funds for Wallops. However, we spend funds in
other ways on the Wallops facility. And some of our
expenditures are not in money. It is in people and talent. If
you look at the work that is going on right now for the
development of the launch complex for Orbital Sciences, over
the last year plus, we have lent expertise and people power
from Langley, Stennis, Kennedy, Marshall, to help MARS, which
is the developer of the launch facility for the State of
Virginia. We have been helping them try to get that facility up
and running, because we need for Orbital to be able to launch.

NASA WORKFORCE

Mr. Wolf. On the workforce. NASA has carried several lines
in its budget over the past few years whose purpose was to pay
for civil servants who were not allocated to a program at the
time. This was due to a combination of major programmatic
transitions within the agency and restrictions on how you can
manage your workforce. Have you finally reached a steady-state
on civil service labor such that all of your FTEs are allocated
to an actual program now?
Mr. Bolden. Congressman, we do not have all civil servants
relegated to a specific program. That is an issue of
flexibility that center directors have, for example, that is
frequently misunderstood, and it is a stumbling block.
If an employee wants to do something innovative, they have
to be assigned to a program that is doing that innovation and
it is something that we don't even have yet, that means nobody
does innovation. We are trying to follow a model that we see in
industry where a center director can allocate a certain amount
of funds within his or her budget so that employees can go and
spend 10 percent or 20 percent of their time and that would not
come from a program.
That is an area that we continue to work right now, and
there is quite a bit of study going on among the leadership of
the agency to find out how we--we pay all of our FTEs, our
civil servants. We are trying to determine how we can give
flexibility to the centers that they can do innovative things
even though it is not covered by a specific program or project
that has a cost code.
Mr. Wolf. NASA has been making use of buyout and early
retirement authorities to adjust its workforce and expects to
do so again in fiscal year 2013. Are you making these
adjustments to reduce the size of your workforce or to update
the mix of skills within it?
Mr. Bolden. I am sorry, sir. Can you repeat that?
Mr. Wolf. NASA has been making use of buyouts, as other
agencies have, and early retirement authorities to adjust its
workforce, and I expect you are going to do the same in 2013?
Mr. Bolden. Yes, sir.
Mr. Wolf. Are you making these adjustments to reduce the
size of your workforce or to update the mix of skills within
it?
Mr. Bolden. Congressman, the primary reason is twofold. It
is to give us the flexibility to get the right skill mix, to
have the right people for programs going forward. You know,
shuttle is gone. There are a number of our workers, that is
what they did. That is all they knew. So we try to cross-train
them to the greatest extent possible.
In order to bring in fresh blood and new ideas, we need to
be able to hire our interns and co-ops. So if people are not
leaving at a pace that allows us to bring in co-ops and interns
at the rate that we want, then we offer them an opportunity to
leave sooner than they would think.
Everyone should understand, some people who were planning
to retire are not retiring because of the state of the economy.
So we are looking at all of the innovative ways we can to help
our employees, even if it is training for something else. In
the case of contractors, for example, who left the shuttle
program, it varies by geographic region. People in the Johnson
Space Center area, they went right over to the petrochemical
industry because they were looking for engineers for the oil
industry. Florida was not quite as fortunate.
We were really worried we were going to lose people, civil
servants even, at Marshall because of the buildup of the
Redstone arsenal. We are somewhat relieved that they didn't
take all of our people. But it varies from region to region.
If I may correct one thing for the record, because I may
have misanswered your question. When you asked about 21st
century funds, we are not prohibited from spending 21st century
funds on Wallops or other NASA flight facilities. There are
provisions in the law for us to use 21st century launch complex
funds for other flight facilities, and sometimes we will do
that. But, to my knowledge, we don't have specific money
designated right now that will go to Wallops for construction
because we think that the funds that we are putting there out
of other accounts is sufficient for right now, the Human
Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate.

JWST--LESSONS LEARNED

Mr. Wolf. Just a few more questions on cost control for
large missions. While the cost overruns in the James Webb
program have been deeply disappointing, I hope that some good
lessons were learned from the experience to help avoid a repeat
of this situation in the future. Do you have a formal process
in place to identify such lessons from the James Webb debacle
and apply them to other large missions that are at risk of
overruns? And, if so, what are the most important lessons
learned?
Mr. Bolden. Congressman, we have a number of lessons
learned from James Webb. Some of them had to do with management
and management oversight. We changed out people in the
management chain at Goddard, at headquarters.
No one was as disappointed when I found out about James
Webb than me. I have taken on some responsibilities that I did
not have before with James Webb. I took its funding out of the
astrophysics division because I could not expect them to take
on that big a task, so it became an agency imperative, an
agency priority. That is why we have had some of the discussion
we have had here. If I had had to depend on the astrophysics
division to eat everything, we would have had no astrophysics
program.
We are looking at reporting frequency. I have my previous
associate administrator, Chris Scolese, monitoring James Webb
every single day. And he and I talked about it every week. He
has been replaced by Robert Lightfoot. Chris is now out at
Goddard where he can watch it even more closely because now it
is his responsibility as the center director.
So we are getting increased oversight over JWST, increased
reporting. We have milestones that are laid out, and I get a
copy of the milestone report on a routine basis. That is why I
can tell you with surety that we have met every milestone over
the last year and a half, cost and schedule.
We now utilize something called Joint Confidence Level
analysis, JCL. We applied it to James Webb. But, to be quite
honest, it was too late. But, still, we applied the principles
of JCL to James Webb, and what it did was it gave me assurance
that the replan was valid.
We utilized what we call their independent review boards.
In the past, the independent review board didn't come to the
administrator. They went to a center director or they went to a
program manager or something. So now I look at all of the
independent review boards for all major projects. And, if I
want, I ask them to come in and brief me. So they know that if
they have a problem and they are having trouble getting the
program manager to hear or the center director to hear, then
their recourse is to come to the administrator.
Those are different things, and we learned all of that from
JWST.

DESTINATION-BASED GOALS

Mr. Wolf. On goals, many members have urged you to set
specific destination-based goals for human exploration beyond
Earth's orbit. The administration prefers instead to pursue a
``capabilities-based approach'' in which our exploration goals
are determined primarily by what capabilities are available at
the time. Why do you believe this is a preferable approach?
Mr. Bolden. Congressman, I think what you state is a
misunderstanding of what we do. We have definitive goals. The
President has established the ultimate goal is Mars in the mid-
2030s for humans, an asteroid in the 2025 time frame for
humans. What you speak of as capabilities, it is a
capabilities-based approach to exploration which says we will
go as fast as our emerging capabilities allow us to.
If we have some incredible breakthrough in in-space
propulsion, for example, we may even speed the time that we
realize the capability of going to Mars with humans. That is
the only capabilities-based thing. It is a capabilities-based
approach, but the destinations are well defined.
Mr. Wolf. Mr. Fattah, do you have anything?
Mr. Bolden. Let me add this. If you go to the astronaut
office, since I used to be there, and you ask them, okay, where
should we be going? My guess is, out of the 65 or so
astronauts, they would say the Moon. Why do they say that?
Because they want to fly to some other place in the universe.
They see 2030 as out of reach for some of them. Whereas if we
went to the Moon, they might be able to do that.
What they don't consider that I do is I can't do
everything. So we will rely on the Moon for research and
technology development. And we may in fact--it is not out of
the realm of possibility that somewhere along the road of
getting to Mars in the mid-2030s we put two astronauts on the
surface of the Moon on a rover that we have under development.
But they won't stay there. We are not colonizing. We are not
doing any of that stuff.
These are the flexibilities that I would like to have in
developing the capabilities of getting us to Mars. Mars is
hard, as is an asteroid. If I had known how hard it was, you
know, when I became the NASA administrator----
Mr. Wolf. I think it is the need for something that is more
inspirational.
Go ahead, Mr. Fattah.
Mr. Fattah. I think it was President Kennedy, when he gave
his speech in 1962, who said that the reason we do this is
because it is hard. The whole design of NASA--I know you have
done many hard things. We thank you for your testimony today.

SPACE HEALTH RESEARCH

Mr. Wolf. Just one or two other questions, and we will have
a lot of questions for the record, too.
I saw a study, a brief article with regard to the health
impact on the brain of astronauts. Do you want to talk a little
about that?
Mr. Bolden. The impact that we have recently discovered--
and we have consulted with our Russian partners because they
have a lot more experience.
Mr. Wolf. Who is the person who has been out longer,
probably a Russian?
Mr. Bolden. No.
Mr. Wolf. How many days?
Mr. Bolden. I will find out for you.
[The information follows:]

Astronaut Health Impact

The person who has had the most total number of days in space is
Russian cosmonaut Sergei Krikalev, who in 6 flights has been in space
for 804 days (including 2 missions to the ISS, the longest being 178
days on Expedition 11).
The longest single trip in space was by Valeri Polyakov, a Russian
cosmonaut, who flew for 438 days aboard the Russian Mir Space Station
returning in 1995. Polyakov's first flight (in 1988) lasted for 241
days. He has been in space for a total of 679 days.

Mr. Bolden. But we have a couple of astronauts--the
longest-serving person in space today is my old crew member
Sergei Konstantinovich Krikalev, without a doubt. Sergei has
spent about two years in space.
Mr. Wolf. How is he doing today?
Mr. Bolden. He is doing well, but I haven't talked to
Sergei to find out what his latest MRI showed about his optic
nerve or whether he suffers from increased inner ocular
pressure.
When Sergei and I flew together in 1994, we didn't even
know what increased inner ocular pressure is, and this is a
recent discovery. We have had some of our researchers who have
known about it. But in the case of medical science researchers,
they don't like to talk about things until they have enough in.
Mr. Wolf. Are we asking the Russians----
Mr. Bolden. Yes, we are. The Russians initially said, no,
we don't know what you are talking about. We have not seen it.
But, in hindsight, they went back and said, you know we have
seen that.
Mr. Wolf. Are we having our doctors examine?
Mr. Bolden. We collaborate. What we are talking about is
increased pressure behind the eye. If you want to talk about
things that it has done, it causes some flattening in the area
of the retina that impacts vision, decreases vision in some,
not all. We are noticing that it is increased pressure on the
optic nerve. We are concerned that it could result in blindness
if it got to the point that it is extreme. We don't see that
yet.
When talking to my chief medical officer, Dr. Rich
Williams, he is not to the point yet where he thinks this has a
long-term impact on long-duration human exploration.
One of the things that people need to understand, these are
microgravity phenomenon. One of the reasons we might go to the
surface of the Moon quicker than we thought is to put people
there for an extended period of time, 30 days or something, to
see if we are seeing the same thing in the space station. The
station is zero G. The lunar surface is a sixth of Earth's
gravity. Mars has gravity. So these problems may not even
materialize themselves in an astronaut that is resident on
another planet or on a Moon.
Mr. Fattah. Now you are talking about a subject that I am
quite interested with the work of NASA related to this. We had
some briefings earlier, this week in fact, on the neuroscience
work and studies that NASA has been doing. And one of the
things, Mr. Chairman, I notice it is not only this issue around
the optics but also in terms of, in the human brain, these
Alzheimer-like effects that happen for astronauts while they
are in space and disappear when they return. NASA has been
doing a lot of work in this regard.
Along with some of the international partners, I understand
there has been some surgical research done in terms of
neuroscience surgery-related tests that have been done on the
space station. This is an area where they have done a
tremendous amount of work over a number of years, and it is
very, very important. So I want to commend you.
We have had personal conversations about this. The Chairman
and I collaborated around getting OSTP to launch a working
group, bringing together agencies that are doing work in brain
research. I am quite impressed with the work that NASA is
doing.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for bringing that up.
Mr. Bolden. Congressman, if I may make one statement,
because we talk a lot about value. I can't put a dollar value
on the research at the International Space Station. The fact
that we now know much more than we ever knew about
osteoporosis, which effects women--and men, by the way. The
fact that we now have discovered this problem with increased
inner ocular pressure, I don't have a way to put a dollar value
on that.
So if you ask me is $100 billion of investment in the
International Space Station worth it, you bet. If I could put a
dollar value on the medical returns here on Earth. I tell
people I go home every day, and I feel great because I have
made life better for somebody on this Earth.
And I apologize for being so passionate about this, but I
would hate to see the Nation become shortsighted with reference
to the money that we spend on space exploration. You cannot
place a value on the benefits that come from the International
Space Station.
We have--I forgot to bring it--but we have a book called
International Space Station Benefits For Humanity, and it is
only biomedical benefits from the last few years. You can't put
a price tag on anything that is in that book. But I would bet,
if you could, we are talking about trillions of dollars.
So I am concerned in these tight fiscal times that the
Nation will lose its way, and those of us, you on this
committee and others, who have to make hard decisions decide
that we are going to not invest in human exploration because we
will do it later.
As Congressman Schiff stated, some of the things we do, you
cannot walk away from. He is absolutely right. You cannot walk
away from entry descent and landing expertise on Mars, and we
are not doing that. And that is the message I am trying to
bring. I know better than anybody, we cannot walk away from
those, and I don't intend to do that.
Mr. Wolf. Well, I don't think anybody up here wants you to.
In fact, I think we are probably pushing more--and that is why
I am a little bit concerned this group CASIS hasn't produced
maybe as much.
Mr. Bolden. Yes, sir. I understand.
Mr. Wolf. Maybe if CASIS had done a better job last month,
something would have taken place that would have been
discovered next week--so they have to get with it. And if they
are not with it in 30 or 45 days, we ought to pull them and
give it to the National Science Foundation or the National
Academy or somebody else.
But to have the opportunities with the investment, I don't
think Mr. Fattah and I are saying we shouldn't do it.
Mr. Bolden. Congressman, I assure you, if they don't meet
milestones, then we will find another way.
Mr. Wolf. With that, we thank you for your testimony.
We have a number of other questions that we will just
submit.
Mr. Wolf. I am not checking up on you, but I will be glad
to go out when you get the briefing, take your CIO.
Mr. Bolden. I will do that.
Mr. Wolf. I would ask you to bring the crew development
companies in and see with regard to the commercial crew
program. I think we are going to have a problem here. Mr.
Fattah and I, we didn't have any problems working with the
numbers we had, but now it is getting harder and harder, and we
would like to be able to continue and for you not to retreat.
So, with that, the hearing is adjourned.

Tuesday, March 6, 2012.

NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION

WITNESS

HON. SUBRA SURESH, DIRECTOR, NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION

Mr. Wolf's Opening Statement

Mr. Wolf. Good morning, the hearing will come to order.
I want to welcome everyone to the hearing on the fiscal
year 2013 budget request of the National Science Foundation.
Our witness is Dr. Subra Suresh, the Director of NSF. We
appreciate you being here.
This subcommittee is a big supporter of basic research and
has worked hard to ensure that we are giving our scientific
agencies adequate support even in times of fiscal restraint.
In fiscal year 2012, for example, we provided NSF with a
2.5 percent budget increase even though overall spending levels
required many other programs in our bill to be reduced or even
eliminated.
That is why I think it is important to make sure that there
is no overlap or duplication at NSF, because some of the
programs we would have rather not had to cut we did cut because
we wanted to give to NSF because of the economy, creating jobs,
and things like that. So really I think you almost have a
greater burden to make sure that there isn't any duplication.
Our interest in basic research stems from the direct
connection between research and innovation, which is itself a
driving force behind the economy.
The investments we make in research today will hopefully
pay off tomorrow in new technologies that can revitalize our
manufacturing sector, improve the efficiency of existing
commerce, or even lead to the creation of whole new industries.
In addition to our economy, basic research plays a key role
in national security. For example, NSF is an active player in
networking and information technology projects that will lead
to increased cybersecurity, which is desperately needed both
within and outside of the government.
In fiscal year 2013 NSF is once again seeking a budget
increase to continue expanding its basic research and STEM-
related human resources program. The budget request would add
another $340 million to NSF research and education accounts,
and our primary task today is to discuss the details of that
request and how NSF proposes to execute and manage those funds.
In a moment Dr. Suresh, we will give you an opportunity to
summarize your written testimony, and we will have questions.
Before that, I recognize Mr. Fattah, the ranking member of the
committee.

Mr. Fattah's Opening Statement

Mr. Fattah. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I want to thank the chairman again for his leadership in
making sure that in the fiscal year 2012 budget we did achieve
I think an appropriate balance to make sure that important
efforts of the National Science Foundation were moved forward.
Now this is a request for something approaching $7.4
billion. It is a relatively low number, a little under 5
percent for the agency, and you have a number of new
initiatives that I am excited about, and I think the Congress
will be excited about, particularly the K-16 math program.
There is going to be a report issued later on today at 1
o'clock by Secretary Duncan which shows, across the country,
that in many of our high schools calculus is not being
provided, which is obviously a significant problem when we
approach the development of future scientists and creating a
workforce that has capacity relative to STEM-related fields.
But I am also interested in your work related to manufacturing
and the CEMMSS program, because obviously manufacturing is
something that the committee has put a priority on.
Thanks to the leadership and cooperation of the chairman we
are working very, very hard in other aspects of the bill to
make sure that we are doing what needs to be done in regards to
manufacturing, but the National Science Foundation has played a
critical role in developing our economic viability in this
area.
So I want to welcome you to the committee today. Thank you
for your leadership. The OneNSF mantra that you have put into
place has I think really unified the agency around critical
issues facing the country and you lead today the premier
science research entity anywhere in the world.
I welcome you and look forward to your testimony.
Dr. Suresh. Thank you.
Mr. Wolf. You can proceed. Your full statement will appear
in the record, and thank you.

Dr. Suresh's Opening Statement

Dr. Suresh. Chairman Wolf, Ranking Member Fattah, it is my
privilege to be here with you today to discuss the National
Science Foundation's Fiscal Year 2013 Budget Request.
Today science and technology are the new frontiers of
American prosperity. The Nation's well being and global
competitiveness depend more than ever before on the steady
stream of new ideas and the highly skilled science, technology,
engineering, and mathematical talent that the National Science
Foundation supports, and particularly the young researchers
that NSF so skillfully nurtures.
NSF supports the full breadth of science and engineering
research and education. We seek emerging ideas with the
potential to transform the world, establish new paradigms, and
foster new industries.
NSF has helped to make the U.S. an undisputed world leader
in science, technology, and innovation. Our universities rank
among the best in the world, our scientists and engineers have
led the world in discovery and innovation. Our transformative
discoveries have created a vibrant private sector and great
jobs.
Worldwide frontier research and technological innovation
driven by a creative and skilled science and engineering
workforce are the new engines of economic growth.
Science and technology are improving the prospects for
economic prosperity and a rising standard of living around the
globe. The U.S. can both be a partner and a leader in this
global enterprise, and it is a measure of our success that many
other nations are emulating the NSF model.
The NSF budget request moves America forward by connecting
the science and engineering enterprise with benefits for
Americans in areas critical to job creation, a growing economy,
and a higher standard of living.
The Administration and Congress have conveyed their clear
determination to build on our Nation's history of success in
leading edge discovery and innovation. That is the unmistakable
message of the President's 2013 budget request for NSF of
nearly $7.4 billion, an increase of nearly 5 percent.
Bipartisan congressional support for the 2.5 percent
increase in our 2012 budget, and especially the strong
leadership of this subcommittee reinforces that message.
NSF has identified critical funding priorities that will
provide long-term benefits for the Nation.
As good stewards of the public trust we have also reduced
or eliminated lower priority programs, identified opportunities
to leverage resources for maximum impact, and held the line on
NSF's operating expenses.
This budget represents a well-targeted portfolio of
innovative investments that provides increased support for
fundamental research in all fields of science and engineering.
This core research, which constitutes the largest share of
NSF expenditures, lays the foundation for progress in science
and technology and enhances our ability to address emerging
challenges.
NSF investments in advanced manufacturing, clean energy
technologies, cybersecurity, and STEM education will support
the Administration's government-wide priorities in these
critical areas.
In 2013 NSF will support across the agency advanced
manufacturing, national robotics, and materials genome
initiatives by investing in research that makes manufacturing
faster, cheaper, and smarter.
I look forward to presenting this area in greater detail
before this subcommittee on March 28th.
Working in concert with other federal agencies, NSF will
advance research to ensure that the Nation's computer and
network infrastructure are secure and reliable and to support a
cybersecurity workforce.
NSF will support clean energy research as a component of an
initiative to address national challenges and environmental
sustainability.
As the ranking member just mentioned, the Administration's
new K-16 mathematics education initiative combines NSF's
expertise in mathematics education research with the Department
of Education's ability to scale up successful programs at State
and local levels.
NSF's large suite of educational investments builds on the
recognition that science and engineering talent is the
foundation of America's future. Areas of educational
investments span early learning to college completion.
NSF brings its strength in supporting fundamental research
and education to each of these broad areas of collaboration.
Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member Fattah, I draw great strength
from the knowledge of our close working relationship and I
value it greatly.
I am extremely grateful on behalf of my colleagues at NSF,
to you, and to your staff for your efforts on our behalf last
year both in the increases you provided the foundation in
extremely tough economic times and in the flexibility you
provided to us.
I greatly look forward to continue working with this
subcommittee as we strive to ensure that the U.S. remains at
the epicenter of research, innovation, and learning that are
driving the 21st Century economies.
More than ever the future prosperity and well-being of
Americans depend on sustained investments in science and
technology.
I will be pleased to answer any questions you may have.
[The information follows:]

THE STATE OF THE U.S. SCIENCE ENTERPRISE

Mr. Wolf. Thank you, Doctor.
Before I get to the other questions, I hope you are going
to have some really significant things for the subcommittee at
the March 28th hearing. We do have Niall Ferguson testifying.
If you get a chance you might want to get a copy of his book,
particularly read the conclusions, but he has a whole series of
recommendations. And I think at the end he pretty much says,
and I am paraphrasing, that the greatest threat to the Nation
may be its small thinking, its lack of vision. We don't have to
get into the hearing now, but hopefully you will give us some
good ideas so that we can move ahead, and ideas that are not
going to divide us but will kind of bring Republicans and
Democrats together and the country together. As we argue over
other things we can really make sure that we put the country
first here, so we are looking forward to that hearing.
NSF's National Science Board issues a biennial report of
indicators representing the scope, quality, and vitality of
America's science and technology capabilities. These indicators
cover a wide range of factors from Federal spending to STEM
workforce composition to research outputs.
What indicators do you believe are most important for
assessing the strength of our science and engineering
enterprise relative to our major international competitors?
Dr. Suresh. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for your question.
I pay a lot of attention to these indicators and I actually
went through them with a fine-tooth comb even just before they
were publicly released. There are a number of things that we
want to watch. Let me start with the positive side.
On the positive side no matter whose--and it is not just
the NSB indicators, but various surveys that have come out--no
matter whose ranking you look at, if you take the top ten
universities in the world, seven or eight American universities
by anybody's metric are still in the top, and I think one of
the challenges for NSF is to make sure that we remain that way
and not lose the leadership. So that is something we pay a lot
of attention to.
I also pay a lot of attention to--again on the positive
news--what other countries are doing with increased funding
with respect to their science and engineering enterprise.
Mr. Chairman, you know this very well, a number of
countries have started funding agencies that are modeled after
the National Science Foundation. So going back a decade
Ireland, South Korea, and many other countries did this. Just
in the last two months three countries are creating new
agencies that are modeled after NSF. Very different countries.
Nigeria, Indonesia, and India. They call them by different
names, but their model is the National Science Foundation. So
that is again good news.
In terms of competition, sustained funding for science and
engineering is something that other countries are doing.
I was in Germany last fall and I even had an opportunity to
talk to Chancellor Merkel about her vision for science funding.
My counterpart agency in Germany, the German National Science
Foundation, will receive a five-year budget increase, with an
annual increase of about 5 percent. So that is the kind of
competition that we face.
So in terms of funding NSB data show that the pace of
scientific research in different parts of the world has
accelerated significantly in the last decade. If you look at it
globally, approximately one-third of science and engineering
research is in North America, a little less than one-third is
in Europe, and about a third, maybe slightly more than one-
third is in Asia, but the Asian part is increasing very
significantly. Asia also includes Australia and New Zealand,
which are small parts of it.
In terms of troublesome data: if you look at the number of
college freshman in the U.S. across all States, after that the
number of college freshman in all of Europe combined, and after
that the number of college freshman in Japan, take the total
sum, that equals the number of college freshman in China. So
that is one.
Twenty years ago the U.S. was number one in the world in
terms of graduation from college with a college degree or an
associate degree. Today we are number eight in the world.
Mr. Wolf. Do you remember who is one through seven?
Dr. Suresh. Number one is South Korea, 57 percent of South
Korean population receives a college degree or an associate
degree. I think some of the Scandinavian countries are probably
there. I don't remember the full list, but South Korea is
number one.
Mr. Wolf. And where are we?
Dr. Suresh. We are 42 percent.
Mr. Wolf. Forty-two. And what were we 20 years ago and 30
years ago?
Dr. Suresh. We were something on the order of about 40 some
percent or something in that range. We have dropped.
Mr. Wolf. Have we dropped in percentage as well as----
Dr. Suresh. I don't remember the exact data, but we have
definitely dropped from number one to number eight, and you
know, the difference is about 16 percent.
There are other things that are very troublesome. So one is
the number of undergraduates. A fraction of the population that
gets a college degree to begin with.
Mr. Wolf. Whether they are in sociology, science, whatever,
it is just a college degree.
Dr. Suresh. College degrees: now if you break it down to
science and engineering, and within that you can break it down
into natural sciences and engineering, you look at all of Asia,
about 20 percent of all the college graduates in Asia get their
undergraduate degree in the natural sciences. About 13 percent
get their undergraduate degree in engineering, so that is 33
percent in the natural sciences or engineering on a high number
to begin with. In Europe about 18 or 19 percent get their
degree in the natural sciences, about 12 or 13 percent in
engineering. In the U.S. about a little more than 10 percent in
the natural sciences, four and a half percent of all college
graduates in the U.S. get an undergraduate degree in
engineering and one and a half percent of all the college
graduates in the U.S. are women engineers. Half the population,
one and a half percent of all the college graduates with an
engineering degree.
I think this is something I have talked to the president of
the National Academy of Engineering about and he is galvanizing
a lot of activities.
And by the way, this is not a new trend, we were always
lower, but you know, it is not showing signs of increase and
this is something that we need to pay a lot of attention to
especially at a time when other countries are rapidly
increasing their investments in science and engineering.

KEEPING SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING TALENT IN THE U.S.

Mr. Wolf. Well, you anticipated the next question. It was
which one gives you the most concern, and they are very, very
troubling.
Dr. Suresh. If I could add one point, Mr. Chairman.
You know, one of the things--so one can ask the question,
if the U.S. always had very low numbers of undergraduates in
colleges who are engineers, trained as engineers, how did we
manage to remain the world leader in innovation, science, and
engineering for many decades?
And one of the data points suggests that, you know, we have
been very successful after the Second World War in attracting
talent from all over the world.
I will give you one data point. In former job as dean of
engineering at MIT, we had 375 professors in my school, 43
percent of them were born abroad and they came to the U.S., and
many of them had their first degree abroad in engineering, and
that was very--myself included--and that has really helped us.
Now one of the things--we don't have any trends yet. It is
too early to tell if we still are managing to attract top
talent from abroad. But one of the worrisome trends for the
future is people who come here, unlike my generation, will they
become American citizens, make this their home and contribute
to the scientific enterprise from here?
I think this is a question that remains to be answered,
especially when there are major opportunities for people
abroad.
Mr. Wolf. So do you think that is happening now? That many
are coming and now are going to be leaving?
Dr. Suresh. Well, I don't think we have enough data to say
it is happening yet. We still receive a record number of
graduate students from different parts of the world who come to
the U.S., who do their graduate work, Ph.D. work in the U.S.,
and that is still happening. We don't know yet if in the future
because of greater opportunities abroad more and more of them
will leave.
Mr. Wolf. Are you seeing any signs that they are?
Dr. Suresh. It is too early to tell. It is true that there
are greater opportunities, it is true that, you know, there are
students who are going back, but we don't know if they go back
permanently or they go test the waters and then come back
because things don't work out.

U.S. FUNDING FOR SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING RELATIVE TO MAJOR COMPETITORS

Mr. Wolf. The Administration used to promote the goal of
doubling NSF's budget as a major component of our response to
international competition in the fields of science and
technology. Although the fiscal year 2013 budget does propose
an increase for NSF, the rate of growth is no longer consistent
with achieving that doubling during the originally planned time
frame.
Do you believe the rate of growth as laid out in the budget
is still sufficient for keeping us competitive with other
nations that have invested heavily in science and technology?
And you know, don't pull any punches, tell us what you really
think of it.
Dr. Suresh. Okay. So again let me go back to the NSB
indicators that were just released about a month ago.
You know, we are still the largest economy in the world
even though we don't fund science and engineering as a fraction
of GDP as highly as some of the other countries do. In fact ten
years--we were number one in the world ten years ago in terms
of investments in science and engineering research as a
fraction of GDP. Now about ten years ago several countries
surpassed us. Germany, South Korea, several of the Scandinavian
countries, and Japan surpassed us.
So in terms of fraction of GDP our competition is very
high. But if you take countries that started from a very low
point in terms of investments in science and engineering, the
NSB indicators give some examples.
For example, between 1996 and 2007 the average annual
increase in basic science and engineering funding in China was
22 percent, 22 percent per year. You look at countries like
Singapore, it was 10 or 12 percent. Malaysia was very high.
Europe on average was 6.5 percent. The U.S. was 6 percent.
Among major countries, the only country that was below us was
Japan, and the NSB indicators point out that the Japanese
scientific enterprise is actually contracting. So just barely
being above Japan is not cause for celebration. So that is one
of the competitions that we face with respect to funding.
Now with a significant increase in funding in some of these
countries, they are also having significant increases in GDP
growth compared to us.
So looking ahead to the next 10 years, 20 years I think we
are going to face very severe competition.
The third thing that I think is somewhat problematic for us
is, you know, we have an annual budget cycle. Many of these
countries have a five-year plan. So science which is
intrinsically long term you can plan three years ahead of time,
four years ahead of time with respect to funding of major
facilities and other activities, whereas here we not only have
an annual process, with continuing resolutions, we are
retroactively planning for our process. So this makes it very
difficult for agencies like ours to keep pace with our
competition.
Mr. Wolf. Well, I hope--you know, we have tried to avoid
politics here as much as we can, but I think this whole thing
has become so politicized. I think the whole Solyndra thing and
those other things have just kind of stirred this up, and I
would hope that once we have an election, no matter who wins,
we are able to get the science and some of these things set
aside and do it in a way that really doesn't get into
Republican and Democrat. Have you read Ferguson's book?
Dr. Suresh. I am getting a copy of it. In fact I will have
read it before I see you on the 28th for the manufacturing
event.
Mr. Wolf. I think he says in 2016 China surpasses us. I
have seen other numbers at 2021. And you know, we know what the
competition is. On the universities, I think the new president
of China, his daughter goes to Harvard, and you know, they all
come over here but I think these are really important issues
for our children and our grandchildren. And I think the
difference is--I am going to go to Mr. Fattah--freedom in
America. My grandparents came from another country. They
weren't scientists, they were bakers, they ran a bakery, but we
are different from China in the sense of freedom of religion
and democracy and openness.
I saw a demographic study, which we will share with you,
given to me by a prominent university president. I won't
mention the person's name because I don't know if they want it,
but China is really having demographic problems that are so
difficult both from an age point of view, and Ferguson mentions
that, but also there are 50-some million Chinese men who can't
find wives because of the aggressive nature of their one child
policy. I mean they are having a lot of problems.
I had a prominent Chinese person come in who is connected
to the government and doesn't want their name known and so we
don't discuss it, but he laid out to me: this is not a country
that is doing everything well. They have a lot of problems.
And so we see them as these ten-foot giants, but America is
still strong because of its creativity, openness, the ability
for somebody that works in a factory to go on to be president.
You don't do that in other countries.
And so as we compare these, I don't know how you quantify
the other problems that they are having in those countries. But
even with those, I think we have to do everything we can do
make sure we develop bipartisan--well, maybe that is not a good
word--a nonpartisan agreement on the sciences and
manufacturing, engineering and all so that whatever party is in
control, that issue is not stopped and started and stopped and
started.
And I think your point on the CR is good. Because we may
fund this year on a CR. I hope not, but it may very well be
that way, and so if you don't have a long-range view of it, it
is very hard to plan. So your points are important points.
Mr. Fattah.
Mr. Fattah. Well, let me say first of all I totally agree
with the chairman, and we have worked because of his leadership
in a bipartisan fashion on this committee and we have come
forward with bills that we can support, and have particularly
focused on this issue of science and science development.
Let me start a little bit away from home. Speaking of five-
year plans, I met with Judith Rodin who leads the Rockefeller
Foundation. She told me that China had in its last five-year
plan a few years back a program to set up some science only
universities and they now have 100--five years later 100
science only universities and 200 math and science
laboratories.
I contrast that to today's report at 1 o'clock where we
have 50 percent or more of the kids in our high schools not
getting calculus, period. I mean it is not in the curriculum,
let alone talking about the quality of the teaching staff and
the like in terms of content, knowledge, and so on. So we have
a lot of challenges.
Now we have advantages. We have in this field advantages
that are very significant, but they used to be absolute and
they are no longer absolute, they are relative. We are not
shadow boxing. We have competition on the field, and we have to
do better as a nation.
And it is difficult I think to reconcile this, but we have
to do two things. We have to get the fiscal house of the
country in order, but we have to make the investments necessary
that position the country for a global leadership in areas that
are critical to our future. And the work that you are doing is
vitally important in that regard.

ATTRACTING U.S. STUDENTS TO SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING DEGREES

So let me get to my questions. One, we have to get more
American students to pursue terminal degrees in the hard
sciences if in fact we are not going to be able to retain very
bright students from abroad to come to stay, right? They are
still coming and they are pursuing terminal degrees in the hard
sciences, but many more are returning home to base their
efforts and to take their considerable intellectual capital to
join forces with people we are competing with, which is great.
I mean we are all for a competition. It is going to bring the
best out of everyone. But we have to either get more of the
home team to pursue these degrees and this knowledge or we have
to hold onto more, or in actuality we are probably going to
have to do better in both areas.
So you are doing a lot of work in this space, and if you
would just take a minute and not talk about the great work that
you are doing but talk about where you see the holes, where you
see the need for us to do more, based on the empirical evidence
from what you know about how we can do more. Because if you
look at the percentage of American students who are American
citizens getting terminal degrees in computer information and
science or in chemistry or in mathematics and so on, it is just
something that should bring great pause to the Nation about how
we are positioned over the long term.
Obviously you can tell us the great things NSF is doing,
but tell us where you think more could be done, where we can
actually gain results. And these are not things that happen
overnight, so obviously we have to do the hard work to get
there.
Dr. Suresh. Great. I will be happy to do that, Mr. Fattah.
So you know, the questions you raise are very complex
issues, and I can point to three or four things that we have
started recently which we hope will move the dial significantly
in the future.
One of the efforts thanks to the chairman's initiative, you
know, we had looked at successful K-12 practices where we had
an NRC report and we rolled it out. As you know we had an event
last fall and identifying what works and how to bring it to the
attention of a large cross section of the country is very
critical. And I am very pleased to report that the initial
indications are that this effort which actually--the chairman
deserves the most credit initiating it--is really catching on.
So we had an event in Pennsylvania.
Last week there was a major event in the State of
Washington. In fact the entire congressional delegation from
Washington requested that we organize this and it was fully
subscribed a month before the event. We printed 5,000 copies of
the report and all 5,000 are sold out and we are looking at
printing more copies. The latest we checked as of yesterday
there are 8,600 downloads of this.
There will be another event in Chicago coming up soon.
There is an event in Maryland.
There is an event in Texas as part of something that we are
organizing in partnership with U.S. News and World Report. We
are bringing it to the attention of school districts, teachers.
One of the things about the event last week is that there
were a lot of teachers, people representing different school
districts.
So I think it has generated interest on what works. Rather
than stating the problem I think one of the nice things about
it is, I think again your leadership was very critical to
launching it this particular way, it talks about what are the
things that work in different parts of the country and how do
we broaden the scope of that.
It is also being brought to the attention of the National
Governors Association. So these are a lot of things we are
trying to do.
Now we are looking at new programs, the K-16 mathematics
partner initiative that is in the budget. I have met twice now
with Secretary Arne Duncan, he is going to be visiting NSF on
April 9th. So we are trying to see how we can coordinate our
respective roles much better than perhaps what we have done in
the past. That is another step in the right direction.
Yet another step is for the first time we have an inventory
of all the K-12 programs across 13 federal government agencies,
and I co-chair that National Science and Technology Council
Committee on STEM education with Dr. Carl Wieman, and we are
trying to see again what different agencies are doing. And if
you look at the data the two biggest players in the space are
Department of Education and the National Science Foundation.
And how do we bring that together?
I am also having conversations with my colleagues from
other agencies, mission agencies, how their activities in STEM
education can help excite young people. So that is another
area.
Yet another example, we have a program called TUES,
Transforming Undergraduate Education In STEM, and the goal of
this is to try to identify best practices in different parts of
the country, you know, from a scientific perspective.
We have a new program which will be funded which started in
2012, called WIDER. In 2013 the request is for $20 million and
there the idea is to take one institution and scale up the STEM
activity in that institution so that we can look at an entire
cross-section of undergraduate studies. And the goal there is
most of the students who have a desire to major in STEM drop
out after their freshman year. So we want to target those
students early on and look at evidence-based practices, tiered
evidence, longitudinal studies.
Mr. Fattah. Well, one of the things that we know is that
students coming out of some of our best schools, you are
correct, they will change their majors in the first year, but
some students who come from more challenging circumstances
actually persist through a little bit better. So the data is
very interesting.
Once of the areas that you mentioned was the issue of women
pursuing engineering degrees. I know that the National Science
Foundation has made some very significant efforts in
university-based programs to develop more programs focused at
women and engineering and with very significant awards over
multiple year periods.
Can you talk a little bit about how that project is going?

WOMEN ENTERING THE STEM WORKFORCE

Dr. Suresh. So with respect to women in the STEM workforce,
in the country it is a very interesting trend. I mean I don't
have the exact numbers in my head, but approximately the
numbers are something like this: Seventy-two percent of all the
valedictorians in American schools in the most recent data are
girls; 72 percent, and that fraction is increasing. Okay, so
that is one.
At the undergraduate level more women graduate from college
than young men do, and that difference is increasing. Okay, so
that is the second one.
At the graduate level we have in the last ten years at the
post-graduate level there has been a 10 percent increase in the
number of Ph.D.s in science and engineering in the entire U.S.
Mr. Fattah. All of it is women.
Dr. Suresh. Most of it is women across fields.
Mr. Fattah. Right.
Dr. Suresh. So one of the good news stories is that women
are coming increasingly into the STEM workforce.
But then if you look at the most recent year which was
2007, the fraction of women in the STEM workforce is 26 percent
at the Ph.D. level. So 41 percent of all of the Ph.D.s in
science and engineering are women, but only 26 percent of them
stay in the workforce.
So you can ask why the difference? There is a time lag
factor because this is a more recent phenomenon, there are a
lot of other factors, but one of the key factors is women
leaving the STEM workforce because of family demands and the
need to raise a family, and this disproportionately falls on
women and there are a number of different factors.
So your question about what NSF has been doing. NSF started
a program about a decade ago called ADVANCE program. The
ADVANCE program gives grants, and this has had a huge impact in
the country.
And I launched, and mainly thanks to the work of a working
group within NSF that worked for about eight months, the group
that I set up after I joined NSF, they looked at a number of
best practices within NSF that were embedded in different
corners of NSF. So what we did was to see if we can elevate
those best practices in the spirit of OneNSF and we identified
certain things that we could do.
So two of our flagship programs are CAREER awards, which we
give about 450 to 500 awards per year for young faculty
members, these are bright young scientists, give them money for
a five-year period so they go into research.
Another program we have is the postdoctoral program again
for young people. So we decided last year that we would provide
opportunities, incentives for women to stay in the workforce.
In fact a lot of these programs are gender neutral, it is not
targeting women per se, and so that is one area.
We actually launched this program in September last year.
It is not something that NSF can do alone. We have to partner
with other agencies, so I have had conversations with Dr.
Francis Collins at NIH, I have had conversations with Charlie
Bolden at NASA, with Pat Gallagher at NIST. We also talked to
the presidents of AAU and APLU, we are talking to HBCU
universities. We have identified segments in there, women of
color who are severely underrepresented in the STEM workforce,
how do we bring them in?
So there are a lot of things that we can do, and I believe
that it is a tone that we set, it is a priority that we set, it
is the engagement and partnership that we create with our
stakeholders like universities, colleges, community colleges
that will have a huge impact.
In fact one of my dreams is that ten years from now, so
when we launch this NSF career life balance initiative, it is
not just up to NSF. If we have a target maybe we can reach it.
So last year we had 41 percent of all the Ph.D.'s in the
country were women. Suppose we get very ambitious and say ten
years from now in 2021 we want 41 percent of all the Ph.D.
level STEM workforce to be women, can we reach it?
So this is a goal that we articulated, and AAU and APLU
presidents Hunter Rawlings and Peter McPherson signed a joint
letter with me promising to work with NSF bringing their
universities, 146 universities together so that we can try to
reach that goal.
This summer in July is the 150th anniversary of the
creation of the Land Grants Colleges that President Lincoln
created during the Civil War, and we hope to look at step two
of our joint efforts. So we are really determined in taking on
a leadership role.
One of the other things we have done--this is my last
point--it is not just for the outside. In the spirit of OneNSF,
we had an NSF career life fair within NSF for our own
scientific workforce and administrative workforce on what we
can do.
So these are some of the activities we are focusing on.
Mr. Fattah. Thank you. I am going to turn it back to the
chairman, but I will come back to some of these issues as we go
forward. Thank you.

FAMILY FRIENDLY WORK PLACES

Mr. Wolf. I am going to go to Mr. Austria, but before I do
I just want to make a comment. That is exciting.
I have four daughters and one son, we have 16 grandkids.
There is nothing more honorable and more amazing than to be a
mother though. In fact, the members who serve here should know,
the only place they are ever going to be missed is not in the
House. I never hear people say I really miss Jim Wright or I
really miss Denny Hastert, but I really miss mom and I really
miss dad. And so the only place you are really missed is in the
house and not in this House.
So that is why I think it is also important that the
industry and you all--that is why we have pushed here for
years--telework. There is nothing magic about strapping
yourself in a metal box so mom can work at home and be with the
children. Also companies and government have to be flexible for
flex time, flex place, job sharing.
And so I think as you are doing that, we want to maintain
the integrity and strengthen the American family. The mom and
the dad spending time with the kids is important, and so that
is why I think government and industry and universities have to
have programs so that moms and dads together can continue can
make sure that they are meeting the needs of your children. And
so----
Mr. Fattah. Mr. Chairman, to belabor the point, but it is a
very important point, you are absolutely right. What they have
done-- because I was there for the launch of this--is a great
effort to make it a very flexible process. When I was at the
Inventors Hall of Fame, there was a young woman who got a
patent for developing an implantable defibrillator, which
requires obviously a battery that is dormant until it is
needed, right? But when it is needed it is very, very important
to keep one's heart beating.
And so it is just amazing. What we need to do is, we need
to make it available for people who need to work from home or
need another year to finish their work or whatever. It is not
just raising children, it is care taking for our parents, it is
all kinds of other things. We don't want to be losing the
talent that we need. Because again, we have students pursuing
these terminal degrees so it doesn't make sense to have someone
who gets one and then have them sidelined because they are
doing more important work. We need to make that work available
for them to do, but allow them to continue their academic work.
Thank you.
Mr. Wolf. Right, the flexibility. Exactly.
Dr. Suresh. If I could just mention two things related to
your comment, Mr. Chairman.
I have two daughters and my wife, and other than me the
only other male in the family is our dog, and so I fully
subscribe to the sentiments that you just expressed.
Regarding your point about telework. We have many more
than--I don't again remember the exact numbers--but NSF has
been a leader in telework. We have more than 70 percent of the
staff have formal agreements in their respective units within
NSF for various teleworking arrangements.
Mr. Wolf. That is good. Mr. Austria.

ATTRACTING AND RETAINING STUDENTS IN STEM FIELDS

Mr. Austria. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Director Suresh, thank you for being here today and thank
you for NSF's support of science and engineering and the
information that you are sharing with us today, it has been
very helpful to me coming up with innovative ways to keep
students in school, retain them, to get them to graduate, and
the importance this has from a economic standpoint both
nationally but internationally as you pointed out.
Let me if I could, and I apologize, Mr. Chairman, I have
got three boys at home, but I do have a lot of nieces and a
wonderful wife who is at home and I certainly can relate to
your comments and I agree with them, but I do have a son who is
in engineer, who is a sophomore in engineering, and as I looked
into his undergraduate program what I found was something you
talked about earlier was the number of undergraduate students
that are coming from China in particular, it was a large
percentage in the universities. And what disturbed me even more
or I should say caught my interest even more was the fact of
how many of those students are largely privately funded now
coming to the universities--not on scholarships but privately
funded coming to our universities--and what is happening with
those students afterwards. I mean to the point where one of the
universities is now looking at what happens to those students
when they graduate and also who are the students that are
coming into the schools.
So I guess, you know, you have touched on some of the
areas, but I want to kind of take a step back.
Number one, how do we get students at a young age, at the
K-12 level, interested in math and science and STEM? And then
how do we--you know, you touched on one program--but better
retain and graduate, you know, more students in the engineering
schools and then to be able to fill the jobs?
I mean we can't fill the need for engineering jobs here in
the United States so how do we get them through this process?
And I can tell you that at one of the universities in my
district, the University of Dayton, they have a good track
record. The University of Dayton is near 70 percent graduation
rate when nationally as you mentioned it is around 42 percent,
and that looking at the numbers in front of me the graduation
rate is approximately 30 percent for public schools and
approximately 45 percent for private universities.
So if you can speak to, you know, what role NSF plays in
supporting. You brought up one program in helping to retain,
but initiative, curricula, and programs to attract and again
retain engineers and scientists, and even going back a step
further from K-12 getting younger students interested in these
areas that are important.
Dr. Suresh. Let me start at the first point that you
mention, Mr. Austria.
If you look across the country, both private and public
universities, roughly the fraction of foreign students at the
undergraduate level is relatively small. So in private schools
it is something on the order of 10 to 15 percent; most of the
universities have a cap. Again, it varies from university to
university, but typically it is mostly domestic with a smaller
fraction for public university students.
But for graduate school it is all over the map. In many
universities most of the graduate students are actually foreign
students.
Mr. Austria. Okay. And I will check my numbers. My numbers
came from one public university and one private university and
they were still very high percentages.
Dr. Suresh. So regarding--by the way the Dayton--I know
Dayton quite well because I had a large grant with Wright
Patterson Air Force Base for many, many years. I used to go
there.
Mr. Austria. And that is why STEM is important in our area.
Dr. Suresh. That is right.
And the problem of enticing students into science and
engineering or exciting more than enticing is a very tricky
one.
In fact I had a conversation with the chairman some time
ago, typically students get hooked to science by the time of
the fourth grade, and after that it becomes more and more
difficult to sort of encourage them to take a career. So it
happens fairly early on. That is about the average, not that it
cannot happen later. And so it is very important that we do
everything possible to excite them about science.
We had a conversation last week with Freeman Hrabowski, the
president of University of Maryland in Baltimore County. In
mathematics, which is his field, typically at the middle school
level is where interest either peaks or dies for many of these
students.
One of the problems we have had, even though we have
identified many best practices, is how do we scale them up in a
way that we have not been able to do? You know, the programs
that we are talking about is one way to do this. The
conversation we are having with the Department of Education and
the K-16 mathematics education program is another. The report
that we produced in response to the chairman's request on best
practices in STEM education is another step in the right
direction. But there are newer opportunities that we did not
even have a few years ago.
For example, we have tools and technologies that are
available now where not just 100 or 1,000 or 10,000 students
can have access to the excitement of science, but tens of
millions of students simultaneously can have access. An iPad
can produce a terabyte of data per day.
So whether we are talking about exciting experiments in
Antarctica that NSF sponsors or telescopes in Chile or Hawaii
or you know the Ocean Observatory Initiative that we have, how
can we hook young minds to the excitement and possibility and
opportunity of science early on so that they view this as an
opportunity?
In a previous job, one of the things I tried to do was to
see if we can also articulate that science and engineering is a
ticket to economic prosperity, because that also drives, you
know. You take a university--a technical institution like MIT--
85 percent of all the undergraduate students come from middle
class or lower middle class families. In fact two years ago in
the freshman class 17 percent for the first time went to
college in their families.
And so one of the things I try to do is to try to gather
data not just for one institution but broadly, look at people
who have been enormously financially successful and show that
science and engineering is a ticket to prosperity. And so it is
a very complicated problem.
Mr. Austria. And if I can, because of the limited time,
going back to the STEM. We have a STEM school in Ohio in our
area around Wright Patterson Air Force Base, but we also have
another STEM facility for teachers.
And let me ask you as far as faculty research and STEM, and
you have got especially a lot of newer faculty, younger faculty
who need seed grant funding, for example, in order to be able
to compete for the larger grants. How is NSF dealing with that
particular situation? Because I think both those areas are
critical in dealing with what you just described.

NSF SUPPORT FOR YOUNG STEM FACULTY

Dr. Suresh. So we do that through a number of mechanisms.
Of course for the best and the brightest in the country, about
450 to 500 new ones per year, so at any given time we have more
than 3,000 of those young faculty, we give them a five-year
grant. Relatively long term early on in their career, these are
called CAREER awards that helps them.
We also have seed grant mechanisms in a number of centers
across the country in different places. So what they do is even
though the institution may have received a grant from NSF, they
have an internal mechanism if they hire a new young faculty
member they give them $30,000 or $40,000 per year to
demonstrate a particular idea, and once the experiments are
demonstrated they can apply for funding from NSF or DOE or NASA
or other agencies.
So there are various mechanisms that are in place.
Then we have opportunities in EPSCoR states. We have 27
EPSCoR states plus Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands where
there are special opportunities for the faculty from those
states to participate.
So there are a variety of mechanisms to do this.

PUBLIC-PRIVATE PARTNERSHIPS

Mr. Austria. One last question, Mr. Chairman, if I may:
dealing with public-private partnerships.
Now I am going to switch over to another university in my
district, a public university that I think is doing some good
work in this and you may be aware of what Wright State
University is doing, but it has launched a collaborative effort
with state authorities, especially during these difficult
budget times as well as private partners to create a first-of-
its-kind neuroscience engineering facility in the Dayton, Ohio
region, and they have successfully raised over $5 million in
private investment towards this as well as secured $12 million
in state funding to match that, and it is a public-private
endeavor.
Then I guess my question would be has NSF looked as this
type of partnership during these difficult budget constraints?
And if so, you know, how are you participating or what are you
doing to encourage it?
Dr. Suresh. Let me give you a few very quick examples of
public-private partnerships.
In our Biological Sciences directorate we have something
called project BREAD, that is $24 million of NSF funding over a
five-year period and $24 million from the Gates Foundation to
look at biological issues, especially in agricultural
development. That is one example of it.
For the last ten years or so NSF and the semiconductor
manufacturing association have partnered together. We fund
Engineering Research Centers and they provide matching support
to these research centers. That is the second one.
Last year we launched a new program called the NSF
Innovation Corps. It is still basic research. At the end of an
NSF-funded project, we can give a very small amount of money in
a short period of time so that NSF principal investigators can
take the output of NSF-funded research with respect to basic
discoveries and create new technologies, processes, or things
which may eventually have economic value. And we engaged two
private non-profit foundations for that: the Kauffman
Foundation of Kansas City and a foundation in Massachusetts.
And the last point that I want to make is in the area of IT
we have partnerships with Google, IBM, Microsoft, to look at
how we can leverage NSF funding of basic research within the
country with infrastructure support, especially in areas like
cloud computing that these companies are engaged in.
Again, we have to be careful about profit and non-profit
issues and so forth, but those are four examples of things that
NSF is engaged quite a bit.
Mr. Austria. And I thank you for your response and I would
just say that seed money that you were talking about earlier, I
don't know what the demand is for that or that program
awareness is, but I think that--you know, that is an area that
certainly I would encourage, you know, as far as it is critical
through K-12 with teachers in particular in getting them
engaged in STEM.
So thank you for your testimony. Mr. Chairman, I yield
back. Thank you.
Mr. Wolf. All right. Mr. Culberson.

ROLE OF PARENTAL SUPPORT IN STUDENT ACHIEVEMENT

Mr. Culberson. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
We are delighted to have you here today, Dr. Suresh, and it
is a great reflection of the subcommittee's unanimity and
enthusiasm for the science education.
You know, virtually all of our questions are focused in
that area and you know that the fact that none of the other
members are not here is obviously because they are trapped in
other committee hearings. We are all equally committed in
supporting you, sir, in the work that NSF does and it has been
Mr. Fattah, Chairman Wolf, working arm and arm with every one
of us that made sure that NSF was protected in this last
difficult year for budgets.
And I want to share this with Mr. Fattah. Just pass it
down, forgive me. Chaka, let me pass that down to you. It is a
marvelous article on how stable funding has been for the
sciences through these last several years, particularly in this
last difficult year that particularly because of the leadership
of Mr. Wolf and Mr. Fattah, NSF has faired pretty well thank
goodness, and we are going to continue to do everything we can
to support you and the work that you are doing. And education
is so vital that these kids with going into science and
engineering and mathematics and physics. Marvelous that you are
focused on it.
Where in Texas are you going to be holding the meeting that
you mentioned earlier?
Dr. Suresh. In Dallas, Texas.
Mr. Culberson. In Dallas, okay. And I look forward to
seeing the report. I just asked my staff to make sure that I
see it. I want to learn more about what you have been doing.
Obviously as we talked about in the last hearing last year
the report was you looked at various STEM techniques around the
country to try to identify what are the most successful. I know
I mentioned to you at the time you just needed to drive down
the street to go look at Thomas Jefferson, and I hope they were
a part of your calculation and figured prominently in your
report.
The chairman's comments earlier I want to reinforce. You
mentioned as did Mr. Fattah about the importance of parents and
moms in kids' lives and encouraging them to go on to become
successful.
We are very blessed, our daughter goes to Thomas Jefferson,
and is a freshman there, and I am sure she would be mortified,
I am glad there are no C-SPAN cameras here, but she would be--
but it is so true, she would be mortified to know that I was
reporting this, but it is absolutely accurate. She told me this
morning as I was driving her to school, which is why I was a
moment late, I try not ever to miss a chance to take her to
school and participate in everything that she is doing from the
time that she was very, very little, from the time she was born
frankly as we all love our kids devotedly, but she said this
morning as we were going in in health class yesterday that they
have got a substitute health teacher for PE and he asked every
class at Thomas Jefferson--and you know, these kids are
extraordinary, they--you know, the process they go through,
they reject 85 percent of the kids that apply, these are the
best and the brightest from ten northern Virginia counties--any
way they asked the professor, Chaka, asked the teacher asked
every class why is it that Thomas Jefferson has virtually no
drug problem? Why is it that none of you all, there just is not
a problem here? The joke is that she told me when she got there
you can put a plate of brownies on the floor of the hallway and
a plate of drugs and the brownies will be devoured instantly,
but nobody will touch the drugs, God bless them. And without
exception every single class answered, because our parents love
us so much and support us and have helped us every step of the
way, and because we are working so hard. Frankly we are too
busy and too tired in order to mess around with drugs and we
are too, you know, smart, we pay attention.
So truly the chairman is right, it is that love as Mr.
Fattah said as well, that you just can't substitute for that
love and attention and devotion. I am sure that was a factor in
your analysis.
And in looking for best practices too is the collaboration
between the really good high schools and universities.
I would encourage you and I look forward to working with
you outside of here, I want to get--come down and see you all
and talk to you about the way your grant process works. I think
there are great opportunities for collaboration between schools
like Thomas Jefferson and university research facilities where
you have got--you are awarding grants to universities. I hope
you will look at finding ways to perhaps find ways to encourage
collaboration between these best and brightest practices.
Steve has got a STEM school in his area, I know you have
got them in Philadelphia, Chaka, as the chairman does in
Virginia, as we do in Texas, but where you have got a really
good STEM science and technology education high school with top
quality kids that are doing really first-class work I hope you
will look at creating grant programs for universities to
develop online partnerships, collaboration with high schools,
and their research labs.
TJ is about to do a $30 million expansion and they are
going to actually have electron microscopes, mass
spectrometers, extraordinary instruments in work that these
kids are doing in their science labs it is equivalent to what
is being done in universities.
So I will obviously work with the chairman and Mr. Fattah
and our whole subcommittee to help support you in your work in
public education.

MAGELLAN TELESCOPE

I wanted to ask about a couple of particular areas. You
mentioned the Magellan telescope astronomy being something
particularly near and dear to my own heart as an amateur
astronomer and keenly aware of the Magellan project, which is--
I just quickly ran a calculation because I hadn't realized how
huge it is, a 24.4 meter instrument to be built in probably
Chile based on wherever the science tells us the clearest skies
are. I know that the chairman of the Senate Appropriations
Committee has a preference for Hawaii, but I think that the way
you all have designed this it is going to be a scientific
competition based on the clarity of the sky and stability of
the atmosphere, et cetera, right? You are going to let the
science direct where it is going to be built. And with all due
respect to the chairman from Hawaii, I know he is partial, but
you are going to let the science direct where it is built.
Dr. Suresh. Well, so I can describe the process that we go
through and the process is no different in this case.
You know, in the case of astronomy we have the decadal
survey, so this is 200 leading astronomers and astrophysicists
get together through the National Academies and they produced
their decadal survey three years ago, and the decadal survey
had a number of recommendations.
So one is to support a project called LSST, which is based
in Chile. The second was mid-scale projects, you know, a few
million dollar projects. The third one, the third priority
according to them, according to the scientists and the experts
in the field, was what they called GSMT, Giant Segmented Mirror
Telescope.
So NSF issued a solicitation and the decadal survey was
based on the assumption that as the chairman mentioned earlier,
that the NSF budget was going to be on a doubling path, by 2016
NSF budget would have doubled compared to 2007. Obviously we
are not on that path anymore, so if we take the reality into
consideration and we made a number of projections, optimistic
projections like the 2.5 increase in 2012----
Mr. Culberson. Yes, sir.
Dr. Suresh [continuing]. And pessimistic projections and so
forth what we find is we are not in a position to be able to
fund major projects of that scope which will cost $1 billion
before too long.
Mr. Culberson. Right.
Dr. Suresh. So we have a solicitation out and it is due I
think in April or so, and a panel of experts will decide. And
what we said was, you know, we will down select based on that,
but currently there are no funds until 2020.
Mr. Culberson. Yeah, you anticipated my question. It looks
like--and this is an article from the January 13th edition of
Science, and NSF has pulled back, and essentially it says here
NSF cannot provide construction funding until 2020 at the
earliest. The private sectors can go forward with raising as
much money as they can. I know Texas A&M University is an
active participant in the project.
What does this do to the timetable for construction of the
Magellan? This thing is extraordinary. I remember the Hale
telescope which we all grew up with as the largest optical
telescope in the world until 1993, it was a 200 inch, this
thing is extraordinary, 960 inches, and actually produces
apparently images as sharp or sharper than the Hubble because
of the ability of the computers to compensate for atmospheric
turbulence and essentially real-time by moving these flexible
mirrors. Is that correct?
Dr. Suresh. That is right.
Mr. Culberson. It is an extraordinary instrument.
What does this do to the construction timetable of this
revolutionary instrument that is going to let us probably image
planets directly around other stars?
Dr. Suresh. So the astronomy community always has been
highly international and entrepreneurial in its activities,
going back to 1956 when the American activities with respect to
telescopes in Chile started. So there are two groups as you
mentioned that are currently working on sending a proposal to
NSF.
We made it very clear in the solicitation that even
assuming reasonably optimistic scenarios, the earliest that we
will be in a position to fund something will be 2020 in the
current situation. But that might not necessarily hold, because
many of those projects take about a decade to launch and start.
NSF is always interested in funding the science. So in fact
half of our funding in astronomy is to do the science.
Mr. Culberson. Sure.
Dr. Suresh. So I think various groups, including existing
telescope operators always look for partners.
Mr. Culberson. What percentage would you have been of the
total funding for this?
Dr. Suresh. Well, we don't know. So in this climate, you
know, we----
Mr. Culberson. Sure, of course, I understand, this is a
brutal environment. This year could be really, really
difficult. And as the chairman said, we could be stuck under a
CR depending on how this plays out.
Dr. Suresh. So you know, historically if you look at the
past we have funded telescope infrastructure, so there is a
facility called ALMA which will officially open in Chile. There
are too many acronyms so I won't bore you with that.
Mr. Culberson. That is a radio telescope?
Dr. Suresh. It is an optical telescope.
Mr. Culberson. Excuse me, optical.
[Clerk's note.--After the hearing, NSF submitted a
correction noting that ALMA is actually a radio telescope.]
Dr. Suresh. Yeah, in Chile, and the telescope will
officially open next year. NSF provided one-third of the cost.
Mr. Culberson. Okay.
Dr. Suresh. The European community provided one-third of
the cost, and the other came from other countries like Japan
and Brazil and others.
Mr. Culberson. What was the original--what I am driving at
just is what was the original intention on Magellan that NSF
would provide? What percentage? Ballpark. Just to help us for
planning purposes to think for the future, because obviously
this is a----
Dr. Suresh. So the decadal survey again put the GSMT as the
third priority and they assumed the NSF budget doubling by
2016.
Mr. Culberson. Right, right, right.
Dr. Suresh. So based on those assumptions they recommended
that NSF put in 25 percent of the cost.
Mr. Culberson. Okay, one quarter.
Dr. Suresh. One quarter.
Mr. Culberson. Right.
Dr. Suresh. So, but you know, we are nowhere near that----
Mr. Culberson. Sure, you are just going to have to wait and
see.

PARTICLE PHYSICS

And another concern, Mr. Chairman and Mr. Fattah, and I
know that you all are keenly aware that we are essentially left
with one particle accelerator in the United States, which is a
real source of concern. Not only is China rocketing ahead with
massive investments of their own in the sciences and outpacing
us 300,000 I think engineers a year versus 30,000 that we are
graduating here, and the Department of Energy is of course a
separate subcommittee and they have got problems as well.
This came out January 27th in Science and I wanted to ask
you what happened. I am not sure what was the budget
recommendation of the president for the Department of Energy,
but this article in Science anticipated that there would be
cuts to the Department of Energy and would threaten the future
of the only U.S. collider still running. The Europeans have one
in CERN.

QUARK-GLUON PLASMA

And this was extraordinary what they are able to do with
this one in Brookhaven is essentially discovering what happens
when you boil solid, you know, matter, like protons and what
happens to them like when you convert liquid water to steam, an
extraordinary science, it is just unprecedented. And actually
they have done it. They said I think when I was looking at this
he says he is not even sure what they have done, the theorists
are predicting that when they boil ordinary nuclear matter that
the resulting plasma would act like a gas in which the
particles barely interact, and instead in 2005 when they
actually did this using this accelerator the result, the quarks
and gluons feel when they are present and strongly so that an
oblong pluff of plasma flows like a liquid before condensing
into thousands of particles, and the lead scientist there says,
``we don't really understand what we have created, there were
all these predictions that turned out to be wrong.'' So it is
extraordinary science that is being done.
Is this facility threatened by--I mean in the President's
budget and what happens to our last remaining particle
accelerator that is making these again extraordinary
discoveries at the smallest levels of matter, you know, while
Magellan is exploring the other end of the spectrum we have got
one accelerator left, what happens to it under the President's
budget under DOE and what role does NSF play?
Dr. Suresh. Okay. So I can provide a few points related to
that.
First of all, I mean I cannot speak for DOE----
Mr. Culberson. Sure.
Mr. Suresh [continuing]. I can only speak for NSF.
Mr. Culberson. Of course.
Dr. Suresh. So I don't----
Mr. Culberson. I just wondered if you were aware of what--
--
Dr. Suresh. So we have periodic conversations with DOE.
For example, one of the facilities that we are funding,
this LSST, 31 percent for a particular instrumentation DOE has
an interest in funding it. So we work in partnership with DOE
where we can.
Regarding----
Mr. Culberson. On a segmented telescope, LSST?
Dr. Suresh. Yeah, LSST, yeah.
Mr. Culberson. Okay.
Dr. Suresh. And regarding your point about the collider in
CERN in Geneva, NSF provided funding for particle
instrumentation, so in the budget request for fiscal year 2013
we have $18 million requested. There was a recent scientific
result that came out of funding NSF provided for the CERN
experiment for American scientists--the particle called the
Higgs Boson----
Mr. Culberson. Uh-huh.
Dr. Suresh [continuing]. And the mass, how particles of
masses, and the NSF-funded research contributed to that
scientific discovery.
We also have funded at Cornell University a synchrotron
facility called CHESS.
Mr. Culberson. Uh-huh.
Dr. Suresh. And CHESS has in the fiscal year 2013 budget a
funding request of $20 million. I just found out recently that
it is funded by our Division of Materials Research, but it is
very broadly used by scientists from a number of different
agencies. In fact I found out that NIH scientists are one of
the big users of the CHESS facility at Cornell.
Mr. Culberson. It is a synchrotron.
Dr. Suresh. A synchrotron facility.
Mr. Culberson. It is not exactly a particle accelerator.
Dr. Suresh. No, it is not a particle accelerator facility,
but that is an example of a facility that----
Mr. Culberson. Uh-huh.
Dr. Suresh [continuing]. That cuts across different
agencies----
Mr. Culberson. Certainly.
Dr. Suresh [continuing]. DOE, and even NIH.
Mr. Culberson. But I mention the particle acceleration--
thank you for the time, Mr. Chairman, in particular we are all
devoted to education, we are going to make sure we obviously
are doing everything we can do to make sure America stays
number one in the cutting edge of scientific research and in
graduating scientists and engineers, but the infrastructure
concerns me. I am just worried about the fact that we have got
one accelerator left and to what extent does NSF have a role in
ensuring that we have got this critical infrastructure?

SCIENTIFIC INFRASTRUCTURE

Dr. Suresh. So you know again, I very much appreciate the
support of this subcommittee with respect to our major
facility's budget. As you know in fiscal year 2011 the MREFC
budget was about half of what was requested, so we had to
really scale back, and thanks to the work of this subcommittee
you gave us flexibility in at least seeing the existing
projects through during the coming year.
So we have four projects that were started already and we
wanted to make sure that taxpayer money was wisely spent. So we
have been completing those projects.
And I echo your concern as well, you know, very good
science of that scale requires very good experimental
facilities, and there are many areas of scientific enterprise
where if we don't support the facility, we run the risk of
losing leadership in many scientific areas. So this is
something that we are paying a lot of attention to.
Mr. Culberson. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Wolf. Thank you, Mr. Culberson.

CYBERSECURITY

Has the NSF computer network been hit by the Chinese in the
last year?
Dr. Suresh. We had one breach last year and we have taken
steps to address that. In fact all of our internet traffic now
goes through the Department of Homeland Security. And so we
have taken multiple steps with firewalls where the traffic is
routed, training of the workforce, data management, and so
forth.
Mr. Wolf. Did you see where NASA's was hit? Did you see the
article the other day?
Dr. Suresh. No.
Mr. Wolf. All right. NSF's budget request contains a new
cross-cutting initiative on cybersecurity called Secure and
Trustworthy Cyberspace. How does this interact with your
existing cybersecurity programs like the Comprehensive National
Cybersecurity Initiative or any other cybersecurity grant work
that predates the creation of the SATC program?
Dr. Suresh. So we have had approximately a $5 million or so
increase in the cybersecurity activity, so we had previously
something called trustworthy computing, and the new initiative
that we are launching in fiscal year 2013 is called SATC,
Secure and Trustworthy Cyberspace. Cybersecurity will have a
total budget of about $161 million. Out of that, $57 million
will come from something called CNCI, Comprehensive National
Cybersecurity Initiative, where NSF is a partner with a number
of other federal agencies. The SATC program itself will have
about $110 million or so in funding.
On top of that, NSF for the last decade or so, has funded
something called Scholarship for Service, which is to train at
the masters level people who are cyber savvy, and the goal is
to have them work for the federal government.
So in the last decade NSF funded Sf S program graduates
have--there are 1,500 of them, 93 percent of them entered the
federal government. And so we have--if you look at fiscal year
2012 and fiscal year 2013 our combined budget for Sf S is $70
million.
So we are increasing our investments in preparing people
for service, especially in the federal government.
Mr. Wolf. Is the FBI involved with you at all since they
are responsible for the cyber crime once the action has been
taken? DHS is to prevent it, you are doing research, is the FBI
part of your effort or do you talk to them?
Dr. Suresh. I can check on that and get back to you
specifically about the role of FBI, but my understanding is
that we are engaged will all the relevant federal agencies, and
I would be surprised if FBI is not involved in this.
[The information follows:]

Mr. Wolf. Okay. The budget documentation for SATC talks
less than expected about researching new and ground breaking
technical solutions and more about seeking to understand and
change the motivations, incentives, and behaviors of technology
users, cyber attackers, and defenders. Why are these social
science factors such a significant part of your overall
strategy?
Dr. Suresh. So it is not just the social science part, even
though that is involved, because I think we really need to
understand the human aspect of these--when we talk about
cybersecurity whether it is----
Mr. Wolf. It is theft. It is called theft.
Dr. Suresh. Right.
Mr. Wolf. And organized crime.
Dr. Suresh. So try to stay one step ahead of those who
attack us, and I think that is part of the goal, and I think
that is the role of SBE that we see.
One of the things I want to mention is beyond SATC we have
a number of programs that go through different directorates. I
mentioned the Scholarship for Service, that is actually
organized through our EHR directorate separately. We also have
programs that involve our Office of Cyberinfrastructure that
have a lot of activities. Now we just released a vision
document for something called Advanced Computing
Infrastructure.
So if you look at 20 years ago, we had the arms race for
supercomputing where a small number of institutions will have
the best capabilities with respect to one supercomputer and
that'll be the fastest computer in the world for a short period
of time before something else overtakes it.
Now what is happening is that 99 point some percent of most
of the heavy computing users don't necessarily need the fastest
computer, but they have a distributed network of computers
which are almost supercomputers.
So part of the challenge is rather than protecting a single
computer how do we protect a network when many, many people
intersect and interact and collaborate? And how do we make sure
that the network is cybersecure? So it requires a new paradigm.
So one of the things we are looking at is we have a five-
prong strategy for this Advanced Computing Infrastructure, that
we just rolled out last month when we rolled out the fiscal
year 2013 budget, and that includes things like grand
challenges and cybersecurity is part and parcel of that
activity as well.
Mr. Wolf. Well, you mentioned the scholarship issue. With
the increase you have over the SATC programs, the budget does
propose a decrease for the Scholarships for Service program.
Dr. Suresh. So I can explain why that is.
In 2011 NSF provided $15 million for Scholarship for
Service. The success rate for an applicant for the Scholarship
for Service with a $15 million investment in 2011 was 35
percent. The average success rate for an NSF program is 22
percent. So it was a 50 percent better success rate in
Scholarship for Service.
Then when we went from 2011 to 2012 the budget for Sf S
increased from $15 million to $45 million; three times
increase. And so we wanted to make sure that we are not just
funding something for the sake of funding without the right----
Mr. Wolf. Sure.
Dr. Suresh [continuing]. So this year we scaled it back to
$25 million, which is still $10 million above what we funded
before.
Mr. Wolf. Right.
Dr. Suresh. So we have the right success rate, we are
attracting the right people, but rather than looking at just
one year I would look at two years, the 2012 and 2013, that is
what I mentioned earlier it is a $70 million investment in two
years.

DUPLICATION OF FEDERAL STEM INVESTMENTS

Mr. Wolf. Okay. Well, we have some STEM questions here, but
I think some of them were covered and we will just submit them
for the record.
The inventory of STEM programs produced by the NSTC's
committee on STEM education found that there was no duplication
between and among the many federal STEM programs. A recent GAO
report on duplication in government, however, determined that
there is significant overlap in these same programs.
Can you discuss the distinction between duplication and
overlap and comment on the implication of the findings of both
the NSTC inventory and the GAO duplication review?
Dr. Suresh. Right. I will be happy to mention that.
Sometimes when we look at, as we were discussing in the
elevator, Mr. Chairman, a couple hours ago, when we look at the
titles of this program or even abstracts of this program there
is apparent duplication or overlap, but when we probe deeper,
it oftentimes goes away.
Now if we take, for example, the inventory--and I co-chair
the COSTEM committee of the NSTC--and what we found was 80
percent of all the STEM programs in the federal government are
funded only by two agencies, that is NSF and Department of
Education. Another 11 to 13 agencies collectively fund less
than 20 percent of the stem programs.
[Clerk's note--After the hearing, NSF submitted a
correction noting that NSF and the Department of Education
together account for only 63% of all of the STEM programs
funded by the Federal government. With the inclusion of STEM
programs of the Department of Health and Human Services, the
percentage reaches 80%.]
If you look at NASA, NOAA, DOE, and other agencies,
especially the mission agencies, even though there may
apparently be overlap, they have a particular focus to these
programs.
So NSF usually funds best practices, upstream activities in
STEM education, whereas these mission agencies focus. So NASA,
for example, has a particular focus on space and----
Mr. Wolf. Sure.
Dr. Suresh. So when we go through the details, this is why
the committee felt in the inventory that there was very little
actual duplication.
Mr. Wolf. Well, would you say the GAO report was wrong?
Dr. Suresh. I think it is not wrong, I think it is one of
definition of what constitutes duplication and all that.
Mr. Wolf. And have you met with them and asked for a
clarification so that----
Dr. Suresh. So there is a task force that has been working
on this, so we are looking at various programs, in fact it is
part of that.
Mr. Wolf. And when will that come out? Because as you know
Senator Coburn has raised the issue too----
Dr. Suresh. Yes.
Mr. Wolf [continuing]. And I think particularly when your
funding increases, then to have it said that there are
duplications, if there are, is troubling. I think it is
important to limit. So when do you expect that the task force
will come by and say----
Dr. Suresh. So the COSTEM committee actually is bringing
together an initial plan for a strategic plan, and the goal is
to finish the strategic plan later this year, this calendar
year. So I think this will all be reflected as part of the
strategic plan that will come out later this year.
Mr. Wolf. And will it make an evaluation as to whether or
not GAO is right or wrong or there was misinformation?
Dr. Suresh. I think it will look at potential for
duplication, potential for leveraging, and I think the
committee strongly felt that, you know, looking at it carefully
in the inventory there was very little duplication.
There may be opportunities for an overlap, and in fact in
some cases the overlap is very good because one agency, NSF,
may come with one perspective whereas NASA may come with a
completely different perspective. In fact it reinforces the
message in some cases. So the strategic plan will look at these
details.
Mr. Wolf. Does Senator Coburn know what you are doing?
Because he has a lot of credibility up here. He did support the
Simpson-Bowles Commission, and he has been very aggressive on
finding funding solutions. Does he know about the task force?
Dr. Suresh. Yes. So I met with Senator Coburn about seven
months ago and about three or four weeks ago I met with his
senior staff and we talked about a number of items, including
the COSTEM report, so they do know about this.

NSF'S EXPEDITIONS IN EDUCATION EFFORT

Mr. Wolf. Okay. The budget also proposes to create several
new Expeditions in Education initiatives that will extend
education efforts to cutting edge research being worked on
through other NSF programs.
What will be the research focus areas for the expeditions
of fiscal year 2013 and why did you choose these particular
areas?
Dr. Suresh. So there are--the goal of the Expeditions in
Education program is to leverage what our EHR directorate does
in the STEM education with the various activities and programs
in the research directorates.
So the budget request for fiscal year 2013, the total
budget request is $49 million, that leverages across the
foundation. Again in the spirit of OneNSF, we don't want
education to be one side and research to be another side
unconnected, so this was created with the idea for seamless
integration.
There are three priority areas for Expeditions in Education
for fiscal year 2013. The first one is undergraduate education.
And the reason for undergraduate education is many of the
points we discussed earlier. Most of the STEM students,
students who want to go into STEM education, drop out probably
in the freshman year, so trying to look at creative programs
that will address that particular segment and interface with
programs like Transforming Undergraduate Education and WIDER is
one of the goals.
The second program is linking emergency preparedness,
sustainability, and how to bring in, you know, natural and
manmade disasters and educational components of this. So that
is the second priority area.
The third priority area for Expeditions in Education is
cyber-related activities. Again, we feel that education should
have a strong component in this.
So those are the three priority areas for the fiscal 2013.

NSF-DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION JOINT INITIATIVES

Mr. Wolf. The Administration has been touting the joint
initiatives between NSF and the Department of Education to
produce 100,000 new STEM education teachers and improve math
instruction at grades K-16, which you had mentioned earlier. Do
you have a timetable, like 2013 we should have this number and
2014 this number? I mean, how are you going to judge if you
have really been successful?
Dr. Suresh. That is a very good point. In fact this is one
of the things we want to do. So I visited with Secretary Duncan
twice and he is coming over to NSF in about four weeks to spend
several hours, not just with me, but with my colleagues at NSF,
and one of the things we want to do is to, again just like what
we did in the career-life balance, rather than looking at next
year's budget and what we can do this year we want to look at a
ten-year horizon and see what are the best practices, how do we
bring what has worked, what has not worked, and programs like
WIDER or Scholarships for Service and so forth? How do we make
sure that the investments we provide retain the best minds in
the teaching profession? And also how do we make sure that this
is sustainable for the long haul?
So I don't have an answer about what we will accomplish
next year or in 2014, but this is one of the things we want to
discuss with Secretary Duncan fairly soon on what should be our
goals with respect to different time lines, and especially
looking at the longer horizon.

PUBLICIZING NSF EFFORTS IN STEM ACTIVITIES

Mr. Wolf. Okay. You covered a lot, and we did too, on the
K-12 STEM report that the subcommittee requested, and I was
glad to hear about the Texas event.
I think I am going to check with Governor McDonnell to see
if they are interested in doing one in Virginia. I talk to
people about it though, and not a lot seem to know. You know,
it tells you in the Bible don't hide your light under a bushel
basket. Do you have the right public relations to let people
know? Because if it is out there and just there and nobody can
access it or--so is there more that you can or should be doing?
Dr. Suresh. So actually we can do more, in fact, you know,
we have regional activities in Pennsylvania, Washington,
Maryland, Texas, Nevada.
Mr. Wolf. Again, the Texas one, who will be invited to the
thing?
Dr. Suresh. U.S. News and World Report will actually be
involved. Our hope is that they will publicize it very, very
widely.
Mr. Wolf. Will you have the superintendent of every school
district there or all the scientists----
Dr. Suresh. I don't have the invitation list yet, but our
goal is to disseminate. So, for example, we want to make sure
that the recommendations of the report get to the school
superintendents, National Governors Association. I think it is
in June, is that right?
Mr. Wolf. Well, I sent the report out to every governor and
we didn't get a lot of response back, although I know how busy
they are.
Dr. Suresh. So you know, for example, the person who
chaired the NRC Committee that wrote the report, Adam Gamoran
from University of Wisconsin, he is now going around the
country and he is talking to a number of people about this.
We have various meetings that are held in different forums
across the country, including gathering of schoolteachers,
major national meetings.
The other way to disseminate this is getting the word out
through the principal investigators. We want to make sure that
that community that is interested in STEM education understands
that there is such a report.
Even going further than that, all NSF PI's. Because for
example, if we look at broader impacts, which is one of the
criteria for all proposals for NSF, about 70 percent of the
NSF-funded PI's who write proposals say that undergraduate
education is important to them, and they have education--STEM
education even at K-12 as an important part of an outreach
activity that they do.
So we are looking at ways of disseminating it through that
venue as well. We are not quite there yet mainly because of
lack of bandwidth at this point, but this is something that we
are looking into.
Mr. Wolf. Okay. If you can think of something that the
committee should do or if we can put language in that would
give you help dispensing and getting the information out so
everyone can see, and I will ask Governor McDonnell if they
have any interest here in the State of Virginia.

ADVANCED MANUFACTURING

Advanced manufacturing. NSF tracks and distributes money
under a variety of headings that relate in some way to
upgrading and modernizing our manufacturing sector. You have
initiatives in advanced manufacturing, cyber and nano
materials, manufacturing smart systems, robotics,
nanotechnology, and materials research and more. Many of these
initiatives overlap or some may be subsets of others.
How do you effectively synthesize all of those different
but related elements into a single cohesive program plan to
achieve the goal of modernizing American manufacturing
capabilities?
Dr. Suresh. It is a very good point, in fact I can tell you
what we have done in the last two months.
I met with Pat Gallagher from NIST, the Undersecretary for
Energy, and the Assistant Secretary for Department of Defense
to see what are the activities in manufacturing that they do,
and we talked about the things that NSF does, and to see how
what we do can feed into some of the things that they are
doing.
For example, we fund basic research in manufacturing that
can tap into specific activities. You mentioned materials, so
some of the areas of interest to the Department of Defense, for
example, are carbon fibers, and this is an area where NSF PI's
have a wealth of experience, and carbon fibers are now a big
part of commercial aviation, military aircraft, commercial jet
engines, military jet engines and so forth. And so that is one
area where we are bring a unique expertise.
Another completely different area where NSF is unique, we
fund $64 million a year for something called Advanced
Technological Education, ATE, which is primarily funding for
community colleges. Probably about 30 percent of that has a
manufacturing training component to it, training young people
in technical professions.
So the National Science Foundation and the Department of
Labor are two major players in this space, and the Department
of Education has some role to play as well.
So we are now having a conversation with the Department of
Labor on how to interface our activities, and of course the
Labor Department has a much bigger activity in this space, how
to coordinate that.
Mr. Wolf. Do you meet with companies to find out what they
are looking for for the future of Boeing and----
Dr. Suresh. So that is a conversation that we are having as
well. In the meeting that we had, we actually had three or four
meetings in the last three weeks with Energy, NSF, DOD, NIST,
on how we can coordinate these activities. Now DOE and DOD
bring in all the industry players into this, major companies
that are involved in this. Not only aerospace companies like
Boeing, but also Dow Chemical, DuPont, and other companies.
Mr. Wolf. Okay. And what is the budget for producing a
pipeline of appropriately skilled workers specifically intended
to fill future advanced manufacturing jobs? Is there a
designated portion of the budget for that?
Dr. Suresh. So it is a little difficult to calculate. So if
you take, for example, I would say 30 percent of our SBIR
programs have a manufacturing component to them, small business
programs, and as you know it is two and a half percent of our
research budget congressionally mandated part of it, that is
about $170 or $180 million.
You take Advanced Technological Education, the ATE program
for community colleges, which is $64 million a year, about 30
percent of that again is manufacturing related.
In smaller programs like Innovation Corps, which is an $18
million budget request, some part of that is related to
manufacturing.
We can also look at Engineering Research Centers, Science
and Technology Centers, industry university cooperative
research centers (I/UCRC's), and a few other activities.
So if we put all of that together I don't know what the
exact dollar number is, but I would say it is several hundred
million dollars a year.

WHAT OTHER COUNTRIES ARE DOING TO DEVELOP ADVANCED MANUFACTURING

Mr. Wolf. Okay. I am going to go to Mr. Fattah, but before
I do, when you did the STEM study and when you also look at
manufacturing, do you also look outside of America to see what
is being done? I mean it is one thing to say we are going to
look in Omaha, Toledo, Buffalo, Philadelphia, Arlington,
Virginia, but do you also go outside and see what is being done
in Germany and how are the Germans or how are the Indonesians
or how are the people of Singapore, how are they attracting
business? Are they putting something in the first grade or
second grade? Did your review go outside the nation?
Dr. Suresh. Absolutely. In fact Dr. Gamoran, the person who
wrote the report, came to the National Science Board and we had
a very spirited discussion on this. Take two countries that are
near the top of these test scores, Singapore and Finland, and
we had a lot of discussion about what happened.
Mr. Wolf. Why are they doing well?
Dr. Suresh. So for example, I think it goes back to a
comment that Mr. Culberson made a few minutes ago, I think
there are a number of factors that feed into this.
In Singapore, for example, a place I know quite well, 10
percent of all the applicants----
Mr. Wolf. Put chewing gum on the ground and----
Dr. Suresh. I never chew gum when I go to Singapore.
Mr. Wolf. You know about the case of the kid----
Dr. Suresh. Yes, I know. I never chew gum any way, so.
But one of the things that happens there is that 10 percent
of all the applicants who want to be schoolteachers are chosen,
10 percent. So being a schoolteacher is a prestigious job which
is high paying and many of them have advanced degrees in the
areas in which they teach, so it is highly selective, and so
that is one factor.
The other factor that Congressman Culberson mentioned
earlier, I think it has a big role as well. The emphasis that
parents and families put in that particular culture on the
importance of education goes a long way, and I think this is
another factor that plays into it.
And third is investments. Science and engineering at the
national level are seen as a ticket to economic prosperity.
I have been to Singapore since 1983, I have been there
many, many, many times. I have met with the prime minister,
pretty much every member of the cabinet in Singapore of the
country, and the emphasis that is placed on education at all
levels for a country of four and a half million people is
extraordinarily high, and I think a lot of those factors play
into this.
Mr. Wolf. Sure. They were all considered in the report, you
were looking not only at America, but you were looking abroad
and looking----
Dr. Suresh. I think the scientists who participated in
the----
Mr. Wolf. Finland, what's the population of Finland?
Dr. Suresh. About four to five million or so.
Mr. Wolf. So that is really I guess on the economy of
scale, but who would take China out and take India out--who has
a corresponding population?
Dr. Suresh. So Germany with a population of about 80
million.
Mr. Wolf. Eighty million. Now where do they reach in that,
are they one through seven, Germany?
Dr. Suresh. I don't exactly remember where they are, but
you know, Germany has a very good technological enterprise
broadly in science and engineering. I think their college
graduation is probably not better than ours.
But one of the things that is unique to Germany is that
even in high school they have two tracks. One track goes for
technical education and another track goes for universities.
So unlike here where it is a self-selection process where
people primarily go to university, even if they go to a
community college then they go to maybe a state university and
then go to a public university or a private university.
In Germany they have tracks where they actually have people
trained primarily for technical skills who end up working in
different industries.
So it is a slightly different system, and that is also
reflected in their research enterprise. For example, if you
look at the German National Science Foundation, which funds
basic research just like NSF, then you have the private
societies like the Max Planck Society and the Helmholtz Society
that fund in partnership with state governments, primarily
state governments in Germany, different scientific activities
in universities and institutes like the Max Planck Institutes.
Then you have institutes like the Fraunhofer Institutes which
are very applied.
And our analogous model here for that would be industry
labs which are shrinking, like the Bell Labs, for example, or
IBM, our national labs, our national labs are sort of models of
that in a way, federal labs.
Mr. Wolf. Well, I agree that it would be a great thing if
we could enhance the teaching profession with regard to
salaries and reputation and things like that. I think that
would be very important if your very best and brightest went in
to education and not into, you know, the law or something like
that.
Okay, Mr. Fattah.
Mr. Fattah. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Let me ask a couple of questions. I am going to call it
three subjects. Prior to that I want to indicate that I have to
go at 12 o'clock. I don't want you to feel as though I am not
interested in the remainder of your testimony, but I have an
obligation to meet with some people as it relates to my Energy
and Water responsibilities on appropriations that I set for 12
noon.
So I am going to cover three subjects. Neuroscience,
manufacturing, and also energy.
So first of all, with the bipartisan support of the
chairman and our counterparts in the Senate we inserted in last
year's bill language that creates a collaboration headquartered
in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy
around neuroscience.

NEUROSCIENCE

Brain research is an area of tremendous interest and import
to the human race, to the country, to our healthcare issues, to
education and the like, and to our military, and the National
Science Foundation obviously is well-grounded and has done very
significant work in this area.
We also suggested that the National Science Foundation
create a budget theme around this area.
And so just to set the stage, half of the patients in our
nursing homes in the country have Alzheimer's or are suffering
from some form of dementia. This is a multi-trillion dollar
cost, but more importantly the quality of life for individuals
is significantly hindered because of diseases like Alzheimer's
and Parkinson's and disorders of a variety of types from
bipolar and so on. Some 40 percent of our returning soldiers
who have been injured have brain injuries. And obviously, as
someone interested in education, I think the cognitive,
teaching and learning issues that we have been discussing all
morning are related.
I know the White House has just put the leadership team in
place, but if you could talk a little bit about this initiative
and how you see the Foundation interfacing with all of the
other agencies that will be brought to this effort, the NIH,
the Food and Drug Administration, DoD, and many others.
So I will give you a chance to comment on that.
Dr. Suresh. Great. So the first thing we did was to look at
the various activities that are going on within NSF in the
broad context of neuroscience. So I can give you a few examples
of this.
So our Assistant Director for Biological Sciences along
with the Assistant Director for Social, Behavioral and Economic
Sciences, in the cognitive sciences area, have been getting
together and having periodic meetings, not only looking at what
we do but the things that we could do in new and unique ways.
So that is the first thing.
If you look at the biological sciences, there are a lot of
activities that go on in neural networks, for example, that
look at things.
In fact, the National Academy of Engineering a few years
ago said one of the grand challenges for the 21st Century is
reverse engineering the human brain.
Mr. Fattah. Right.
Dr. Suresh. And that works in many different ways.
Looking at both from a viewpoint of understanding the human
brain to mimicking the functions of the human brain for
activities like machine learning, from anything from learning
languages to voice recognition systems and using the internet
as a powerful tool to continually enhance our understanding of
how the human brain works.
You take another activity that you just mentioned, 40
percent of our soldiers coming from Iraq and Afghanistan suffer
from some form of traumatic brain injury. NSF has long funded
activities in things that you don't associate with TBI.
For example, I know this work because I participated in it
20 years, you have an improvised explosive device at some
meters away or tens of feet away from an object, what is the
stress pulse that comes from the point of explosion and what is
the impact on the human head, for example, on the brain tissue?
And the stresses go bounce back and forth. And how did it
affect the tissue levels, cell-level behavior? So there have
been a number of activities that have taken place with funding
from what NSF funds with other agencies.
Let me just close with some of the new things we have
initiated. I went to NIH in November, met with the heads of all
their institutes in one place--and we invited Dr. Collins to
come,--and the head of our Biological Sciences Directorate had
a conversation on things that are unique to what NSF does and
how that can interface with what NIH does so that we can
collectively address anything from TBI to Alzheimer's to
Parkinson's and a variety of activities.
The unique things that we bring are computer and
information sciences research, engineering research at NSF,
that other agencies may not have especially at the fundamental
level.
So we are looking very carefully at a variety of these
activities.
Mr. Fattah. Well, we are going to be very interested as
this collaborative effort begins, and this is the first time in
the country's history that an effort of this type, in terms of
neuroscience, will be launched and headquartered obviously at
the highest levels of the government. It is based in the Office
of Science and Technology Policy, but I fully expect that the
National Science Foundation will play a very significant role
in this effort as we go forward. We understand that it will
require investment, but I can't think of any area that we
should have more curiosity about than the human brain, and
given the issues that are laid out as a predicate for the
question, I think you understand how I see it relative to
public policy.

ENERGY

Let me move quickly to energy. The European energy alliance
announced last week that they have set 2030 as a goal to try to
compete with us because they are concerned about our
investments now in renewable and innovative forms of energy.
So I think that in this very competitive world, we have
been behind in this area, and now we are starting to move
forward, but others are going to compete and it is going to
require a bipartisan commitment as the chairman was referring
to earlier if the country intends to compete. Because others
intend to do so.
I was at the ARPA-E Summit last week with some 2,500 energy
innovators, and fascinating work is being done on everything
from battery development up through using tobacco crops for the
fuel for cars. It is an amazing enterprise that ARPA-E has set
up, using some of the techniques that the Foundation is known
for, a merit-based selection process to really use science as
the best determinant about how to proceed in terms of
investments. So there is a lot to be said about it.

CYBER-ENABLED MANUFACTURING

Let me conclude with a question around cyber-enabled
material manufacturing. You talked about this area. Fifty
percent of the Dreamliner, the new Boeing plane, is composite
material. This is the first time that we have had this and it
really puts a focus on the work that the Foundation and other
agencies like NASA have done in this area to show this
connection between science and basic research and economics.
I was out at the Pratt and Whitney plant in Hartford where
they are making new jet engines. In fact there is a young woman
there who is not yet 30 who is leading part of the team that
has developed the new approach on jet engines that cut the
noise down by 70 percent and fuel use by 30 percent. They have
orders from all over the world. And so there is work to be done
in this area.
I know that you have made a number of very important grants
to universities in this particular area, so if you could speak
for a minute about that whole effort, that will be useful.
Dr. Suresh. Let me start with the aerospace industry. So if
you take a Boeing 747 from the time a company like Alcoa comes
up with a new aluminum to the time that material actually makes
it into the plane that flies with passengers, it is about 20
years because of federal mandates, requirements, FAA
certification, and all kinds of things, it takes 20 years. So
it is a very long process because human lives are involved at
35,000 feet.
One of the things that has happened in the last ten years,
and the materials genome initiative addresses that part of it
by using computational modeling and also doing more predictive
methodologies, bringing more predictive methodologies,
interfacing them with data networks for material properties,
one can significantly cut down the time it takes from
conception of a new material to implementation and the use in
commercial practice. And the goal of the materials genome
initiative is to cut down the time by more than a factor of
two. So instead of 20 years it will be less than 10 years.
A very good example is the use of composite materials in
the Dreamliner, and as you mentioned it has other benefits as
well. I don't know if you heard about this, the Dreamliner,
unlike a regular plane where the cabin humidity is 5 percent
relative humidity, in the Dreamliner it is more than 30
percent, so it is much more comfortable as well, and that is
because of the materials, because the composite material can
take a higher stress so you can actually pressurize the cabin
to a lower altitude that makes it more comfortable for the
passengers inside for the same cost. So there are a lot of
benefits of these kinds of things in cyber-enabled materials.
So CEMMSS, the new CEMMSS program in 2013 by directorate is
just that.
Mr. Fattah. Well, I want to again thank you for your
leadership. These are critical areas obviously, but there are
areas that we didn't cover today that are just as important to
the Nation. Basic research is something on which we have to
have a fundamental, uncompromising position as a nation that we
are going to make these investments, we are not going to be a
global leader on the cheap. It is impossible. We are going to
have to make the investments, but the benefit to the country I
think should be obvious to us all.
So thank you very much and I thank the chairman.
Dr. Suresh. Thank you.
Mr. Wolf. Thank you, Mr. Fattah.
Mr. Culberson.
Mr. Culberson. I know Mr. Fattah needs to leave. And Chaka,
I am just going to go into a little bit of the China thing with
Frank because of a concern about cyber, you know how it works.
Mr. Fattah. You are in good hands.

CYBER WARFARE

Mr. Culberson. That is right. He will keep me roped in.
I wanted to ask if I could, Dr. Suresh, have you had a
chance to go out to the FBI cyber warfare headquarters in Mr.
Wolf's district and have you had the cyber briefing, the
classed cyber warfare briefing?
Dr. Suresh. I haven't received the classified cyber
briefing yet, in fact we talked about this in a meeting just a
few months ago and I intend to pursue that and go get briefed.
Mr. Culberson. Please, as soon as you can.
Dr. Suresh. Thank you.
Mr. Culberson. Is there to your knowledge any prohibition
against purchasing Chinese-made routers, telecommunications
equipment? Does NSF have any prohibition against purchasing
Chinese routers, telecommunication equipment, obviously
computers are more difficult, but is there any prohibition
against purchasing that type equipment?
Dr. Suresh. I will check on that. My understanding is that
because especially in the last couple of years we have been
working so closely with the Department of Homeland Security and
others, I will check on that and get back to you for the
record.
[The information follows:]

In the purchase of routers, telecommunications equipment, and
computer equipment, NSF follows government-wide procurement policies,
standards, and practices, as prescribed by the Federal Acquisition
Regulation. NSF does not have an agency-specific prohibition against
purchasing Chinese routers, telecommunication equipment, or other
computer equipment made in China. A search conducted in the Federal
Procurement Data System (FPDS) revealed that no direct procurements by
NSF have been awarded for products made in China within the last year.
NSF recognizes the importance of protecting the information and
assets that support our Nation's investments in science and engineering
research. Per the requirements of Section 518 of House Report 112-284,
NSF recently provided the Committee with our first quarterly report on
the status of agency cybersecurity efforts. Our report describes
methods that NSF uses to assess cybersecurity threats, steps that we
take to prevent and mitigate against attacks, agency cybersecurity
policies and procedures, and outreach efforts used to ensure NSF staff
awareness of cybersecurity risks. In addition, NSF requires annual
cybersecurity awareness training for all NSF staff.
Also per the requirements of House Report 112-284, Section 518, NSF
has consulted with other federal agencies to discuss the risks
associated with cyber-espionage and sabotage. The NSF Director and
Chief Information Officer (CIO) have contacted the Federal Bureau of
Investigation (FBI) to arrange a classified briefing at the FBI cyber
warfare facility, to discuss specific security threats that the FBI has
identified, and to understand potential approaches for mitigating and
responding to such threats. Additionally, NSF's CIO attended a top
secret briefing on cybersecurity that was hosted by the federal Chief
Information Officer. NSF computer security personnel coordinate
directly with security officials at the United States Computer
Emergency Readiness Team (US-CERT) and NSF participates in the Federal
Chief Information Security Officers (CISO) forum to ensure awareness of
current threats to the cybersecurity landscape.

Mr. Culberson. It is worth following up on and particularly
after you have this briefing. One of the things that they will
tell you--and this is not classified, this is out in the open--
is that India has an absolute prohibition against any Indian
governmental agency, I don't know it may extend to the private
sector, but certainly as far as the FBI told me, Mr. Chairman,
a blanket, it is illegal in India to purchase any Chinese
telecommunication equipment, routers, computer equipment
because it is all infected, it is all hardwired to send, you
know, information back to whoever designed it. It is just
unbelievable the scale.
As I know the chairman has said before and I want to make
sure I reiterate it too, and obviously the work that you are
doing in science is you want to be obviously as open, you want
to encourage collaboration, but what we are dealing with in
China is something completely different I think than anything
the world has ever faced before.
I am a student of history and I always remember the--I
discovered the crusades during college, and was dumbfounded to
discover that Constantinople, the wealthiest city on earth in
the 13th Century was looted and sacked by Christian crusaders
who were diverted from the Holy Land essentially by loot. I
mean they destroyed this magnificent beautiful city.
The scale of theft that China has engaged in exceeds
anything we have ever seen in history, it exceeds the looting
of Constantinople, the sack of Rome, it is unbelievable. It is
essentially worldwide, it is--envision army ants moving through
a forest, the FBI will tell you, and this is out there as well,
that there are only two types of companies left in America,
those who know they have been hacked by the Chinese and those
that don't know they have been hacked by the Chinese. It is
essentially everybody. The only thing they don't have I think,
Mr. Chairman, are the Colonel Sanders recipe and the FBI--
excuse me--the Coca-Cola recipe, because they are not on a
computer.
So please be aware of it. It is extraordinarily important.
And this was an open source, I gave this article to the
chairman, Dr. Suresh, it was in Aviation Week that the reason
the F-35 program has been so delayed and has become so
expensive is because this is collaborative, it is networked out
over many subcontractors, the F-35 is spread over companies
almost all over the world that as fast as we develop a new top
secret piece of stealth technology and have a meeting over the
Internet and they log on, okay, tomorrow at noon we are going
to have this meeting, here is the latest piece of technology, I
think Mr. Chairman, remember that article points out the
Chinese have logged on, they are watching the meeting. Hackers
are logged on, they know about the meeting, and they are seeing
everything as fast as we put it up. You are aware I know the
scale of the problem.
Glad you are going to get out and have the cyber warfare
briefing, and I don't want to delay you much longer, I also
want to visit with you after the hearing about getting you out
to visit Thomas Jefferson. Dr. Holdren is going to come out.
They have a science fair in fact in the beginning of May, I
think all those kids are going to put out their science
projects, and I think he is coming, Mr. Chairman, we are going
to try to get you out with Dr. Holdren the first week of May
for Thomas Jefferson when they do their star science fair. It
is early in May.
Mr. Wolf. We are not in session then.
Mr. Culberson. I think so. And if you are here and Dr.
Holdren is here and you are available to come out and see
firsthand what these kids have produced, it is just
extraordinary.
Mr. Wolf. Excuse me, have you ever been to Thomas
Jefferson?
Dr. Suresh. I have been there, yes. Yeah.
Mr. Culberson. That is a good time to go and to go with Dr.
Holdren and the chairman, because it is an extraordinary
example of what works, and a lot of this is not rocket science,
it is just straightforward, it is love, TLC, making sure you
are attracting the best and the brightest and then encouraging
them.

NEXT GENERATION COMPUTERS

Let me ask you about the supercomputers. Oh, it is on here
because I didn't have a print copy of the article. Oh, that is
what you were telling me is the exascale computers.
To what extent is the NSF involved in helping drive the
development of the next generation of supercomputers? The
article I see here in the January 27th edition of Science
indicates that apparently the Department of Energy is deeply
involved. Is NSF involved in that effort or is it primarily
DOE?
Dr. Suresh. So DOE probably has a greater role in the
computing speed and the sophistication of computers, but NSF
historically has played a significant leadership role.
Most recently in creating the National Center for
Supercomputer Applications at the University of Illinois, for
example, we have supported that for a long period of time. Just
last fall we funded--we have been funding for the last several
years--a project called Blue Waters for a new computer, and the
University of Illinois this year will install a Cray computer
that is quite fast. I don't remember the exact speed after that
computer. So that is an example on an activity and there are
other programs.
There is a new program at University of Texas in Austin----
Mr. Culberson. Uh-huh.
Dr. Suresh [continuing]. Where we are funding high
performance computing in a significant level. I forget the
acronym for this program, but it is another activity that is an
example of this.
Mr. Culberson. But it is primarily the Department of
Energy. What can we do? I know the chairman is keenly
interested in this as I am and the other members of the
subcommittee to make sure that it is the United States that
builds the next generation, and I think this article points out
it is exascale is the next step beyond petaflops, and it is
distressing to me to see in this article it points out that
the--Japan and China have built and operate the three most
powerful supercomputers in the world. Today China has two
machines that operate at--I think theirs are about 11.3
petaflops, and China has five that operate at 4.7, and the U.S.
has six.
What can we do on the subcommittee to help you, sir, ensure
that the United States is building the next generation
supercomputer?
Dr. Suresh. We are, for example, DOE funds this activity in
Oak Ridge in Tennessee and we have significant support as well.
So activities like this, especially partnerships with
agencies like DOE and DARPA, would be very useful for us. You
know, one of the things--NSF is very good at funding basic
research that leads to----
Mr. Culberson. Uh-huh.
Dr. Suresh [continuing]. Computing hardware and software
research, and given especially the current budget environment,
if we can work with other agencies where we support what feeds
into the creation of a supercomputer and also the science that
goes to maintain the capabilities----
Mr. Culberson. Uh-huh.
Dr. Suresh [continuing]. This is what we rolled out in our
vision document what we called Advanced Computing
Infrastructure.

GRANT LIMITATIONS

Mr. Culberson. Let me also ask and we won't detain you much
longer, we can again follow up with written questions and visit
with you again after the hearing, but I think I saw an article
that said it is NIH that limits the percentage of a grant that
is awarded to a researcher so that no more than 20 percent of
the grant can be for salary or is that you all? Is that NSF?
Dr. Suresh. Well, I think NIH has recently----
Mr. Culberson. Or excuse me, NIH, yeah.
Dr. Suresh [continuing]. Has recently put in some new rules
as well because of the current economic climate.
One of the things that they have talked about is also if a
person has a certain amount of funding already from NIH then
they will try to look at that factor in the evaluation of
proposals.
Mr. Culberson. Yeah, I just saw that article. There are
apparently seven researchers at seven institutions that have
more than seven huge grants over $1 million, but do you all
limit it in any way what percentage of the grant can go to
salary or----
Dr. Suresh. I forget----
Mr. Culberson. You do? Is it 20 percent? Does that sound
right?
Dr. Suresh. University professors usually charge summer
salaries----
Mr. Culberson. Uh-huh.
Dr. Suresh [continuing]. Which is, you know, less than 25
percent. So it is about 20 or less.
The NIH is unique in that because they have hospitals and
there are a lot of medical doctors----
Mr. Culberson. Right.
Dr. Suresh [continuing]. Who charge, you know, who have
appointments as faculty members in affiliated universities so
we don't have--so our situation is different than that.
Mr. Culberson. Okay, right, because you are university
professors and they are drawing a salary from the university
and----
Dr. Suresh. That's right. In most universities the nine-
month salary is paid for by the university.
Mr. Culberson. Uh-huh.
Dr. Suresh. So it is only the summer salary that is in
question.
Mr. Culberson. I see.
Dr. Suresh. In a few universities they bring in----
Mr. Culberson. Two months.
Dr. Suresh [continuing]. Two months of summer salary, yes.

PROTECTING NSF FUNDING IN A DIFFICULT FISCAL ENVIRONMENT

Mr. Culberson. I see. Okay. And this will likely be a
particularly brutal budget environment this year for the entire
country, and you know how devoted the chairman is, Mr. Fattah,
the whole subcommittee to NSF and science funding.
What would you leave us with as--I know the chairman may
with other questions--but certainly the one I would like to
leave you with is an open-ended question, Dr. Suresh, so tell
us how would you advise us to firewall in the event that heaven
forbid, you know, things really get ugly, what do you want us
to be sure we protect at NSF in that environment?
Dr. Suresh. So first of all let me say, you know, I want to
thank Chairman Wolf, Mr. Fattah, and members of this
subcommittee I thank for the enormous support you have shown to
NSF and you continue to show to NSF in a bipartisan or
nonpartisan way. I think it is really heartening especially in
this financial climate.
The one point I want to make, I have been thinking about
how to communicate the importance of NSF to the country and the
future of the country----
Mr. Culberson. There you go.
Dr. Suresh [continuing]. And different people have come up
with different ways.
The only way I can communicate, and maybe let me try this
on you, Mr. Culberson, it goes back to a story from England.
You may know that Mr. Michael Faraday was the scientist who
first produced electricity in his lab.
Mr. Culberson. Yes.
Dr. Suresh. And when he produced electricity with British
taxpayer money to support the research, he met with the then
chancellor of the Exchequer of England, the treasury secretary
of England, William Gladstone. So Mr. Gladstone asked Mr.
Faraday, ``why should the British taxpayer fund your research,
what is the value of your research?'' To which Mr. Faraday
responded, ``sir, one day you will tax it.''
So my response about the point I want to leave you with is
NSF has a request of $7.4 billion of taxpayer money for fiscal
year 2013, but if I were to calculate the return to the U.S.
Treasury of the taxpayer investments in NSF I would argue that
it is many, many, many times over $7.4 billion, and that is the
reason to continue to support NSF, even in this tough budget
climate.
Mr. Culberson. Thank you, sir, we will do our best to help
communicate that to our colleagues and to the country in this
difficult time, that there is no better investment in the
future of the Nation than in pure scientific research
unencumbered by politics.
Thank you, sir.
Mr. Wolf. Thank you, Mr. Culberson.

GRANTS MANAGEMENT

Since fiscal year 2009 the number of grant awards made by
NSF has increased significantly while your budget for grants
management has remained relatively constant.
Your fiscal year 2013 request continues this pattern by
proposing significant increases in your research accounts while
extracting administrative savings from your management budget.
Is that pattern sustainable, and do you rate your grants
successful, failure, mixed?
Dr. Suresh. So it is a great question, in fact this is a
question we struggle with on a daily basis. In fact my
predecessors, previous directors of NSF, and as well as myself,
you know, we have constantly talked about how overworked NSF
staff are, and the proposal pressure is very high.
In 2009 it was compounded by the fact that we had the
stimulus funding, a big infusion of new funding. I mean of
course it is a good problem to have, but nevertheless with an
increase in workload the existing NSF staff had to handle a
significant amount of additional work, in fact 50 percent more
budget in a short period of time.
Mr. Culberson. We should have such problems.
Dr. Suresh. I wish we would continue to have this problem,
but it is an important issue. So we are trying to address that.
You know, we are trying to walk a very fine line between
providing opportunities for young researchers, and we don't
want to have the success rate for grants go down, at the same
time we don't want to burn out our staff either.
So one of the things we are trying to do is, with all the
requests that come to us on reducing the budget and operating
expenses, we thought we will not let it go down, we will not
reduce the number of NSF staff, and you know, we will continue
to support that because we need that very critically. At the
same time we will look for new models and new modes of
increasing efficiency to the extent we can.
For example, we will have a new financial management system
called iTrack that will become fully operational by 2014, and
we are well on our way to implementing it.
Last year 1 percent of all the panel reviews that were done
by NSF were virtual panels, our goal to 2013 will be 5 percent.
We will increase it five fold in one year. Again, we need to do
that slowly because we want to maintain confidentiality of the
review process and things like this. So we are taking a variety
of steps.
I formed a merit review, working group internally to come
up with new ideas and new mechanisms of looking at how we can
do proposal review more efficiently than what we have done
without necessarily an increase in budget.
So these are all efforts that we are trying to do to
address the point that you made, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Wolf. Okay. We will have this other question for the
record, but are the grants getting as much scrutiny today as
they have in the past?
Dr. Suresh. Yes, they do. So we don't compromise on quality
at all. In fact if anything, you know, our scientific
excellence of the proposal is an absolute requirement.
Mr. Wolf. Now, do you think, and this is a difficult one to
trade off, you cannot have a 100 percent success record insofar
as I asked you, how do you rate grants, success or failure?
Because a big initiative may fail and so how do you balance
having been safe versus having the great vision but protecting
the taxpayer's money? Am I making myself clear? Maybe I am not.
Dr. Suresh. Absolutely. So in other words if you are too
cautious----
Mr. Wolf. Right.
Dr. Suresh [continuing]. We are not going to be risk taking
and we may not have good innovation.
So we have two programs that are relatively new. One
started in--actually both started in fiscal year 2012. One is a
program called INSPIRE, which in the fiscal year 2013 budget
has a $63 million request, and what it does is truly
transformative interdisciplinary ideas that could be high risk,
but high reward.
Mr. Wolf. Right.
Dr. Suresh. So some of them will fail and we want to
encourage failure because if it is going to be very
successful-- so that is one example of it.
Another example is something called Innovation Corps.
Innovation Corps is in a small budget, $18 million budget in
fiscal year 2013. And in Innovation Corps, for example, after
NSF funding is over we give a small amount of money for six
months or so and see whether they have a chance of success.
Maybe it will become an SBIR, maybe it will lead to a product.
Typically for those kinds of activities if you have a
successful rate of 30 to 40 percent it is widely successful
because most of the ventures usually fail.
Mr. Wolf. Right.
Dr. Suresh. And in fact in the venture capital community
the success rate is less than 5 percent. So if you have a 20
percent success rate that is enormously successful.
So those are examples of activities where we are trying,
looking at the trade off in exactly what you said.
Mr. Wolf. Okay. So people don't come in and say, you know,
we better be careful because our record is not that great so we
want to go for some safe ones. I think you have to balance it
out and that can be difficult.
Many traditional grant management activities like site
visits are labor and cost intensive and therefore might not be
possible in a constrained fiscal environment. How are you
changing your approach to grants management and processes for
grantee oversight to enable you to do more with less?
Dr. Suresh. Again, this is----
Mr. Wolf. Telework? Are you using----
Dr. Suresh. So Telework is one area. We also look at the
financial software, moving to a new system to make it more
efficient so we can monitor----
Mr. Wolf. Do you do teleconferencing rather than having
them come in----
Dr. Suresh. So this is a 5 percent what I call virtual
panel. So instead of people flying in from all over the country
it also saves us money. A typical panel review costs NSF about
$55,000.
Mr. Wolf. Right.
Dr. Suresh. So by doing a lot more of them we actually save
money.
It has other benefits as well. We talked about women in the
scientific workforce. If a young woman, faculty member has a
child and doesn't want to travel, cannot travel, they don't
have to travel, they can participate through these virtual
panels. So this is----
Mr. Wolf. Have you compared the success of the grants made
by the virtual panel versus those where there has been an on
site?
Dr. Suresh. So we actually are doing a research project on
this. Last year we had some pilot projects. We have real
panels, we have face-to-face panels versus virtual panels, and
trying to see what works, what doesn't work.
The other thing is confidentiality of the review process.
If it is a virtual panel we have to be very careful so we don't
send out sensitive information because it is virtual.
Mr. Wolf. Right.
Dr. Suresh. So these are things that we are focusing on
now.

MANAGING CONTINGENCY COSTS

Mr. Wolf. Okay. We will put this to the record, too. Your
Inspector General's office has identified tens of millions of
dollars of unallowable contingency costs budgeted in each of
three construction projects reviewed over the past few years.
The persistence of the problem suggests either NSF is not doing
enough to adequately address the concerns raised by the IG or
you fundamentally disagree with her findings regarding what
should be allowable. Why aren't these construction contingency
issues being more expeditiously addressed?
Dr. Suresh. Okay, I am happy to answer that, in fact you
know, NSF----
Mr. Wolf. We had her up the last time.
Dr. Suresh. Sure.
Mr. Wolf. We did not have her up----
Dr. Suresh. So we have ongoing conversations on this. In
fact we have--you know, NSF has a no cost overrun policy that
was instituted a few years ago, so we don't allow cost
overruns.
Some of the projects that came into existence have, because
of the uniqueness of the infrastructure that needed to be
built, had contingency provisions built in consistent with
standard practices in other federal agencies and industry
practices. Now we have multiple----
Mr. Wolf. Now how did that compare with DARPA? What did
they do? What is their----
Dr. Suresh. I don't know specifically about DARPA, but we
have talked to other federal agencies on what contingencies
they have, and what NSF has allowed, especially with a no cost
overrun policy, is not out of sync with some of what the other
federal agencies do, and I can get you more information
specifically on DARPA.
[The information follows:]

Dr. Suresh. The third thing that we have with respect to
contingencies is we have different milestones. So anything over
$16 million has to be approved by the National Science Board.
So we have the horizon phase, we have the preliminary design
phase, we have the final design phase, and each of these are
milestones where the National Science Board has to approve the
project.
So it is true that there was some difference of opinion
between the leadership of our budget and financial office and
the GAO and the Inspector General's office, so they have been
in frequent conversations over the last many months. We are
hoping that this will be resolved, because NSF does some things
uniquely with respect to building new infrastructure for
science, and definitely we, you know, we want to be really
careful about taxpayer funds. And with the no cost overrun
policy we ensure that with periodic milestones. We just want to
make sure that the perspectives are synchronized between what
the inspector general is looking for and what----
Mr. Wolf. What happens if the project is moving toward a
cost overrun, what do you do? You just----
Dr. Suresh. So we can reduce the scope of the project.
Mr. Wolf. Right.
Dr. Suresh. And so this is why the cost overrun policy was
put in place.
Mr. Wolf. What year was that put in place?
Dr. Suresh. I think four or five years ago.

DOCUMENTING THE IMPACTS OF NSF-FUNDED RESEARCH

Mr. Wolf. Okay. We covered this indirectly, but last year a
number of NSF-funded research projects were publicly
highlighted as being wasteful or frivolous. They highlighted a
broader issue, the difficulty you have in demonstrating to the
public the impact of scientific research.
What efforts does NSF have under way to more systematically
document and describe the effects of research on the economy or
the attainment of goals such as improved health? Ways that
people can see.
Dr. Suresh. So we looked at many of these projects very,
very carefully and I just want to preface that by saying last
year we received 55,000 proposals and we funded 13,000 of them.
Mr. Wolf. Okay.
Dr. Suresh. And it is done with a very vigorous progress.
Twenty percent success rate with a very vigorous merit review
process and we don't want to deviate from that process.
We looked carefully at--you know, one of the dangers that
we--again, we have to walk a very fine line--we want to talk
about the projects in a way that the non-scientific public can
understand it, but at the same time when you do that sometimes
you run the risk of making two different projects appear very
similar. Or when the impact of the project is too diluted and
made too non-scientific, the novelty and sophistication of the
project is sometimes lost. So we are looking at it very, very
carefully and making sure that the public perception of what
NSF does is correctly reflected in the quality that we try to
foster. And you know very well, it is not an easy job, but we
are trying to improve that in every way that we can.

NSF USE OF RECOVERY ACT FUNDS

Mr. Wolf. The use of Recovery Act funds. NSF has one of the
lowest outlay rates for stimulus funds of any agency in
government. In fact as of last month the NSF still had over $1
billion of unspent stimulus money.
Recognizing that situations like that are not in keeping
with the concept of economic stimulus, OMB recently issued a
memo directing agencies to speed up their use of remaining
stimulus funds with a goal of expending all the funds by the
end of fiscal year 2013. Now we want to be careful that we
don't have Solyndras, so I am sensitive to that, and maybe the
OMB is not right here.
But what steps are you taking to attempt to speed up the
outlay rate of your stimulus funds and how much can you
reasonably do to improve your expenditure rate when most of
these funds went to universities as part of a multi-year
research project?
Dr. Suresh. So I can get you the exact numbers as of now,
but my understanding is that the stimulus funding given to NSF
has already been committed.
So NSF----
Mr. Wolf. It has already been committed.
Dr. Suresh. But I can get you the exact number for the
record.
[The information follows:]

Dr. Suresh. So NSF works differently in the sense that, you
know, we make a three-year commitment, and sometimes the
expenses are not reflected in the balance sheet because you
make an advance commitment. These are grants given to
universities.
Mr. Wolf. Right.
Dr. Suresh. And so sometimes there is a difference of
perception on what is already spent and what is not spent, so
most of the time it doesn't mean we have not committed the
funds already.
Mr. Wolf. Okay. They say it is been 100 percent obligated,
but----
Dr. Suresh. Obligated, right.
Mr. Wolf [continuing]. How much lower.
Dr. Suresh. I am still learning the Washington----
Mr. Wolf. Yeah, me too. The NSF----
Dr. Suresh. I am still learning the Washington language, so
sorry.

NSF'S HEADQUARTERS

Mr. Wolf. The NSF headquarters. The lease for your current
headquarters expires in 2013 and GSA is working to ensure that
you have a seamless transition to a new lease. The prospectus
that will allow GSA to make formal agreements for you, however,
is still pending before the Congress.
What are the ramifications of not getting your prospectus
approved in a timely manner, and what is the latest that you
could receive prospectus approval without negatively impacting
your cost and location plans? Does the committee up there
involved with that know what you are going to tell us?
Dr. Suresh. So, you know, having been a renter before it is
never a good time for a lease to come up when you are leasing
or renting from somebody.
NSF's lease expires at the end of 2013. In December of
2010, GSA submitted a prospectus to Congress, which has not
been acted on yet, so our expectation is that this year GSA
will go through this process and provide us the next steps and
guidance, and it is procurement sensitive, and I will be happy
to provide you the latest information.
[The information follows:]

The prospectus for NSF's replacement headquarters lease was
approved by the U.S. House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee
on Thursday, March 8, 2012. Committee staff communicated their
appreciation of NSF's ability to work with them to reflect a savings in
our space request. Our understanding is that this resolution permits
GSA to take several immediate actions.
First, the General Services Administration (GSA) can now work with
NSF's current landlord on an interim lease agreement until a new lease
is awarded. That will ensure continuity for NSF's employees. Second,
since the House resolution preserves the plan for NSF to remain in
Northern Virginia, we hope this will encourage the Senate to follow
suit without further hesitation. Lastly, GSA will now move aggressively
forward on the procurement to have a new lease for NSF in place by
summer 2012. GSA must have Senate approval of the prospectus in order
to sign the new lease.
The U.S. House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee and the
U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works were made aware
by GSA of the potential cost that a holdover lease situation would have
on NSF's budget. GSA has also worked closely with NSF to identify ways
in which their procurement approach will consider our budget
constraints in a new lease action. We look forward to reporting back to
the Committee on a positive and cost effective outcome to this issue.

Mr. Wolf. And are they making it clear though to the
committee up here the importance and that if things are not
done within a reasonable time that it could cost the government
more?
Dr. Suresh. Absolutely. We are very sensitive to the
financial aspects, and in fact GSA, who is running this, are
very much aware of the timelines and deadlines related to this.
Mr. Wolf. Okay. Well, that gets to the next question, but
our concern with this situation has been to ensure that your
employees are not needlessly uprooted from their homes and the
NSF will not end up needing exorbitant amounts of funding to
execute a new lease agreement.
Are you confident that these concerns will be resolved in a
satisfactory manner?
Dr. Suresh. I very much hope so, because this has been also
part of the, you know, thinking behind what GSA has been
working on. So they are very much aware of these issues and so
we will wait to hear from them as soon as they are able to get
back to us.
Mr. Wolf. Well, it is important.
You don't remember, but Senator Robb initially worked out
the agreement for NSF to come to Arlington. Arlington used to
be in my congressional district. I supported what Senator Robb
did then, but there was great effort to stop it. NSF wanted it
to be downtown on Constitution Avenue, I guess it was, or
Independence Avenue, but everyone wanted to be within a couple
of blocks of the White House.
Now they are happy and a lot of your people have relocated,
so now to force them to relocate again and the impact on
families and children attending schools and traffic patterns,
I, you know, hope it can be resolved. I think the sooner you
are able to come up and explain to the committee that this is
the way to save money, not really to spend money, the better
off it will be.
The others we will just submit for the record. This chair
just dropped down about three inches. I think Mike Ringler sets
it so when the hearing should end, the chair goes down. I think
he is trying to tell me it is time to end and so we will just
end on that.
We have a number of other questions for the record.
I appreciate the good work you all do. I hope there is no
more problem with the internet of employees watching things
they should not watch. I want to make sure that is not--and I
would think if you ever see that again, that person should be
fired.
Mr. Culberson. Zero tolerance.
Mr. Wolf. Because that hurt in a way, so just zero
tolerence. I mean, don't even think about it, because that
draws it out and gives people an excuse, and I think it was
wrong.
But I do want to thank you and your people for the good
that they do. I think it is important to keep these things as
totally non-partisan as we can, and I think that Mr. Fattah and
Mr. Culberson and the committee are committed to doing
everything we can. We look forward to the hearing on the 28th
with Niall Ferguson. You might go to the last--you might not
finish--but make sure you go to the last chapter of the book
and the last couple sentences, and it sort of gives you, you
know, the concerns.
So hopefully you guys will be visionary as to what we can
or what we should do to bring back jobs here in America so that
Mr. Culberson's iPad can be made in the United States. Did you
see the second New York Times piece? I guess you did about the
Foxconn factory suicide rate in China. There are social issues
here too. I mean we don't believe in slave labor in this
country and I know sometimes I raise an issue about China and
somebody may not understand.
Two weeks ago I was in southern Sudan where the Chinese are
supplying the weapons, rockets to kill people, and they are the
number one supporter of the genocidal government in Khartoum.
So you really can't separate these things out.
The 2010 Nobel Prize winner is in jail, so there are moral
ramifications as well as scientific ramifications, and there
are some interesting books out. One is about the many western
companies that cooperated with the Nazis. We can give you the
title where they cooperated. I won't mention the companies, but
some of them are very, very prominent. Great guilt after the
war to think of an American company and a western company
cooperating with the Nazis.
There is a program the Chinese fund called the Confucius
Institute. Are you aware of that? When universities participate
in that, you really can't have anything to do with the Falun
Gong, you can't have anything to do with the Dalai Lama in
Tibet.
And so when you look and interview the women from the Nuba
mountains who are saying they are being killed by Chinese-made
rockets and you see what they are doing in conditions like
that, I think it is important that we are very, very careful
that we are not participating in that. Because when the Chinese
government changes, which I believe it will very, very soon,
and they write the history, it shouldn't be the American
government or an American business that participated in such a
way that enabled them to do some of these really bad things.
So if you can also let the committee know, and I appreciate
Mr. Culberson raising it, when you do go out to that place, and
I would be interested in your comments.
But again, thank you for your service and please thank all
your employees.
Dr. Suresh. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Culberson. Thank you, sir.

W I T N E S S E S

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Page
Bolden, C. F. Jr................................................. 75
Holdren, J. P.................................................... 1
Suresh, Subra.................................................... 171

I N D E X

----------

Office of Science and Technology Policy
Dr. John P. Holdren, Director

Advanced manufacturing:
Page
Administration initiatives................................... 23
new approaches to............................................ 37-38
Advanced semiconductor production................................ 33-34
China, cooperation with.......................................... 39-42
Commercial crew, private sector involvement in................... 36-37
Cooperation between NSF and the Department of Education.......... 34-35
Federally funded research, public access to...................... 42-43
International Space Station, ensuring access to.................. 20-23
Joint Polar Satellite System..................................... 45-46
Manufacturing jobs, increasing opportunities for................. 43-45
Mars exploration funding......................................... 26-31
Nanotechnology health and safety issues.......................... 35-36
National Aeronautics and Space Administration:
funding levels............................................... 33
planetary science proposals.................................. 18-20
National Science Foundation funding initiatives, competition in.. 31
Neuroscience..................................................... 23
Opening statement:
Dr. Holdren.................................................. 3-17
Mr. Fattah................................................... 2-3
Mr. Wolf..................................................... 1-2
OSTP's role in science budget development........................ 24-26
Questions for the record:
Mr. Aderholt................................................. 67-73
Mr. Wolf..................................................... 52-67
Space Launch System Development.................................. 31-33
STEM education research, dissemination of........................ 46-49
Supercomputing................................................... 49-52
Technology transfer and job creation............................. 38-39

National Aeronautics and Space Administration
Maj. Gen. Charles F. Bolden, Jr., USMC (ret.), Administrator

Aeronautics:
budget proposals............................................132-135
program.....................................................102-103
America's leadership in space exploration.......................118-120
Astrophysics program............................................101-102
China's space activities........................................135-138
Commercial cargo program........................................111-112
Commercial crew program................................100-101, 125-131
Computer security.............................................. 138-139
Destination-based goals....................................... 146, 147
Education budget.............................................. 131, 132
James Webb Space Telescope:
lessons learned........................................... 145, 146
program..................................................... 98, 99
Joint Confidence Levels.......................................... 100
Mars program and the flagship mission future................... 113-118
National Aeronautics and Space Administration
budget challenges......................................... 103, 104
workforce................................................. 144, 145
Opening statement:
Administrator Bolden......................................... 76-96
Mr. Fattah.................................................. 75, 76
Mr. Wolf..................................................... 75
Planetary science program.................................. 97, 122-125
Plutonium production............................................. 121
Questions for the record:
Mr. Culberson.............................................. 163-165
Mr. Graves................................................. 165-169
Mr. Wolf................................................... 151-163
Russia, negotiating with for space station transportation..... 140, 141
Space commercialization....................................... 120, 121
Space health research.......................................... 147-150
Space Launch System funding................................... 110, 111
Space shuttle:
orbiter disposition........................................ 108-110
transition and retirement.................................... 140
Space Station, research and.................................... 141-143
Unmanned aerial systems........................................ 104-107
Wallops flight facility.......................................... 144

National Science Foundation
Dr. Subra Suresh, Director

Advanced manufacturing:
cyber-enabled manufacturing............................... 215, 216
efforts of other countries................................ 212, 213
federal programs........................................... 210-212
Computers, next generation.................................... 219, 220
Cyber warfare.................................................. 217-219
Cybersecurity.................................................. 203-207
Energy........................................................... 215
Grants:
contingency costs, managing................................ 224-227
limitations.................................................. 220
management................................................. 221-224
Magellan telescope......................................... 199-201
Neuroscience.................................................. 214, 215
National Science Foundation:
documenting the impacts of NSF-funded research............... 227
expeditions in education effort........................... 208, 209
headquarters.............................................. 231, 232
protecting funding for in a difficult fiscal environment..... 221
use of Recovery Act funds.................................. 228-231
Opening statement:
Mr. Fattah................................................... 172
Dr. Suresh................................................. 172-183
Mr. Wolf..................................................... 171
Particle physics................................................. 201
Public-private partnerships................................... 196, 197
Quark-gluon plasma............................................. 201-203
Questions for the record:
Mr. Serrano................................................ 246-250
Mr. Wolf................................................... 234-246
Science and engineering, U.S. funding for relative to major
competitors.................................................. 186-189
Science and engineering talent, keeping in the U.S............... 186
Science, technology, engineering, and mathematics education:
attracting and retaining students in STEM fields........... 193-195
attracting U.S. students to science and engineering degrees 189-190
Department of Education, joint initiatives with.............. 209
federal STEM programs, duplication of..................... 207, 208
NSF efforts in STEM activities, publicizing................ 209-210
women entering the STEM workforce......................... 191, 192
young STEM faculty, support for.............................. 196
Scientific infrastructure........................................ 203
Student achievement, role of parental support in............... 197-199
U.S. science enterprise, state of.............................. 184-186
Workplaces, family friendly................................... 192, 193