he will now come to order good morning everyone i'd like to welcome all of our witnesses here today we look forward to your testimony so please that you're here with us today is a very busy day on the hill and i'm going to try to be brief in my opening so that will have as much time as possible for discussion however i think it's important to note at the outset that based on all of our witnesses testimony there's an agreement on the importance of a vital and robust technology development program at nasa and the need to revitalize nasa is existing technology development activities and i think it's fair to say that all three would likely agree that nasa has been under investing in technology development in recent years given that two of our witnesses represent distinguished committees  national academies and the third is one of most senior officials at nasa i think those views or into our host's attention yet to some extent our witnesses are preaching to the choir today the subcommittee has been concerned for some time about the state of nasa's long term technology programs and we highlighted the need for action in last year's nasa's nasa's reauthorization act to quote find the number ten from that act nasa should make a sustained commitment to robust long term technology development activities such investments represent critically important seed corn and which nasa is ability to carry out challenging productive missions in the future will depend i would also note that the summary report of the augustine panel that has been reviewing massive human spaceflight plans also acknowledged the importance of technology development and i quote from them the committee strongly believes this time for nasa to reassume its critical role for developing new technologies for space sentiment on the augustine to mantle which i believe that we all heartily concur nasa's technology development activities are critical not just to nasa future but to the quality of life for all of our citizens and for our nation's competitiveness discussions of technology development can wind up sounding pretty wonky so let me be clear why i think massive efforts are so important and need to be supported this is weird a photograph actually were having a recent discussion about this photograph i know that it's available on the nasa website it's a picture of a standard commercial airplane that i believe really makes a strong point as you look at it you'll see some of the most major systems and technologies from research undertaken or funded by nasa it's an aircraft that many members of congress actually the majority of us fly every single whole week to come here to work and yet i bet very few of them or even members of the public at large recognize that nasa r d r and d has made this airplane and others possible this picture just one illustration of the impact of nasa as research on our society and our to me i have no doubt that each of nasa's other's enterprises could produce similar examples and i hope that they will because it's a story that needs to be told time and time again so i don't think any of the members here today need to be convinced that nasa should pursue a vigorous program of technology development rather we want to explore what it will take to get such a revitalized program in place at the agency and in that regard i want to state my strong belief that we that we don't revive allies tech technology development at nasa by robbing peter to pay paul that is carving out funding from an already underfunded constellation program so that the long term technology program can be augmented believe this would be pennywise and pound foolish you don't fix one underfunded program by taking money from another underfunded program and expect anything good as a result in addition i suspect that there may not be a one size fits all organizational structure for technology development at nasa but i want to hear from our witnesses on that topic as i know that each of them have been thinking a lot about this issue but it's not just a question of either money or how the organize say tional deck chairs are arranged nasa has to be smart and opportunistic in seeking out ways to get as technologies out to the private sector and to other potential government users that's probably a topic for its own hearing but perhaps our witnesses here today will have some thoughts on what nasa could possibly do in that regard so i look forward to an interesting informative discussion alas my colleagues today if we can please refrain from asking our nasa witnesses about nasa's response to the augustine panel which is scheduled to be released later today we know that mr schoolies is not going to be able to make a comment at this point and we'll have other opportunities in the future to get nasser's perspective in the next coming weeks so with that again i'd like to welcome  witnesses and now i'd like to turn to mr olson for any opening comments that he would like to me recognize that each use spent considerable time and effort preparing for this hearing and some cases travel considerable distances to be here please know that this committee appreciates the subcommittee appreciate your efforts as well as the wisdom and experience that you bring remarkable achievements that advanced the state of the art aeronautics and astronautics in many extraordinary ways collectively they have directly contributed to this country's high standard of living both in terms of directly contribute to a strong from their work but suffice to say that the products spring from massive technological genius permeates our daily lives most notably the transportation communications propulsion and medical industries in recent years has restructured the way it stimulates developing new technologies moving away from an independent such as office towards a diverse less structured effort influenced more by the needs of individual missions and programs views expressed by the ext science community seem to suggest that nasa ought to return to the former model and look forward to hearing from the smores witnesses on the most appropriate way to perpetuate nasa's and to a record of technology innovation and development issues i and how can the most promising technologies be transferred into specific agency projects and missions as well as benefit the commercial sector and one last issue what is the best way to ensure that advanced concepts and technology development efforts have the necessary funding and management stability i can't think of a low civilian federal agency that has done more to improve our nation's economic and technical prowess the nasa that's not because nasa is in the business of advance or social will be rather their technological discoveries it evasion developed in the in the pursuit of challenging space and aeronautics missions have been acquired and adapted by others in many creative products and services it's a genius of america people that's made take that those products and turn them into something for our economy and for closing i want to get recognized and think critically for is lot of service and strong leadership in nasa through the first half of this year you led the agency during always challenging period of transition between administrations your steady hand and candor is appreciate giffords and thank you for this important hearing and thank you for the leadership that you've shown on science and technology nasa separates in the field of advanced concepts and technology development have not only moved to the field of space and aeronautics forward but have improved our lives the use of satellite communications space based weather observations and they have aviation navigation systems in this time of transition and budget constraints i believe it is important that nasa continue to have a focus on the technologies necessary for not just the next space mission but the missions that are in our distant future panelists thank you for joining us today and providing your opinions and expertise to this subcommittee i look forward to working with each of you as well as my fellow committee members as we seek to continue nasa's ability to explore the far reaches of this universe and inspire our country thank you m chairman at this time i'd like to introduce our witnesses first up we have dr robert braun who was the co chair of the national research council aeronautics and space engineering board committee to review the nasa institute for advanced concepts we also have with us today dr raymond escala who is vice chair of the committee on the rationale and goals of the u s civil space program and chair of the national research council aeronautics and space engineering board and testimony your written toast money has been included for the record for this hearing and when you completed each of your testimony will begin a round of questions and all of the members will have five minutes to question the panel would like to start today with d giffords member olson and members of the subcommittee thank you for the honor of appearing before you today to discuss the roche is to strengthen nasa as advanced concepts and technology development programs my name is robert braun the views expressed today have been shaped through a twenty two year career in aerospace engineering in both government and academic positions today i speak to you as the co chair of the national research council committee to review the nasa institute for advanced concepts with your permission i'd like to summarize my views this morning leaving sufficient time to answer your questions i'd like to begin with a summary of our undersea report nasa stablished the nasa institute of advanced concepts in one nine hundred ninety eight to provide an independent open forum for the extra no analysis and definition of revolutionary space and aeronautics concepts these are concepts that could impact a nasa mission ten to forty years in the future funded at approximately four million dollars per year or roughly point zero two percent of nasa budget nyack operated for approximately nine years and received a total of one thousand three hundred nine proposals from which they made one hundred twenty six phase want to wards and forty two phase two awards primarily to small businesses and universities throughout the country at its inception nyack was in vision as a cross cutting program reporting to the agency's chief technologist however in two thousand and four ny program management within nasa was transferred into one of the mission directorate nasa's exploration systems mission director and in two thousand and seven was terminated i'd like to highlight the following four key findings and recommendations from our committee report one nyack met its mission and accomplished its stated goals to nasa and the nation need nyack like organization three the original nasa implementation of nyack as an extra an organization managed above an across the mission directorates was effective and for  modifications could be made both within the act itself and within nasa to improve the effectiveness of this and prize chief among these modifications would be potentially reestablishing aeronautics and space systems technology development enterprise within nasa itself in my view a nasa strongly position for the future should include a blend of mission focused near term capability based mid range and discipline based long term technology investments strategically guided by continuously engaged advanced concepts program however at present there is no nasa organization responsible for the solicitation of valuation and maturation of advanced concepts or for the subsequent infusion of those worthy concepts into nasa strategic planning process in addition while mid range capability based technology investments are perhaps the most critical for a forward looking agency like nasa within nasa today it is this type of technology investment that is actually minimal in my opinion this is not appropriate for an agency whose purpose includes demonstrating this nation's scientific and technological prowess or one that is trying to inspire the next generation of engineers and scientists a technology for nasa greatly hampers our aeronautics and space flight development programs as an example we cannot continue to rely on one nine hundred seventy s era technology to land systems on mars particularly if we want to one day build towards eventual human exploration another example as stated by both the aldridge commission in two thousand and four and the augustine commission this year we cannot plan a sustainable human exploration program without strong technology leverage based on these observations i suggest nasa stablish a formal enterprise to continuously evaluate prioritize and mature a strategically selected set of technologies in the relevant environments many positive outcomes are likely from a long term broadly focused nasa advanced concepts and technology development program chief among these glances the provision of a more exciting aeronautics and space future that our country has today a s game changing space an area not discover ease or within our nation's grasp each of these advances would also serve as a spark to a technology based economy an international symbol of our country's scientific innovation engineering creativity and technological skill and a component of the remedy to our nation's scientific and mathematical literate literacy challenges our nation needs to dream big and achieving a large goals is precisely what america has come to expect of nasa with a stronger focus on technology development nasa would be well poised to deliver on some of society's grand challenges this completes my introductory remarks i'd be happy to respond to any questions you may have thank you  thank you chairwoman giffords and members of the subcommittee appreciate the opportunity to appear before you today to address the subject that's very important to the country and has been particularly in my crosshairs for the last three or four years in the national research council and aeronautics and space engineering board aerospace is one sector where the u s remains preeminen and we have in large part nasa to thank for that but our future leadership depends on continued investment in long term advanced technology r and d in r and r c report on america's future in space we described the many reasons why space is important to the country including the recognition that space generates high end jobs in science engineering and math supplying the workforce for the aerospace sector of our economy that remains the envy of the world beyond that it inspires an interest in technical fields of study that is and will continue to be of vital importance to our economic competitiveness sustaining u s leadership in space depends on having a sufficiently broad and deep technology base that pushes the printers of our knowledge leads to innovation and new systems and challenges conventional wisdom with transformational technology when it comes to truly game changing technical breakthroughs a long term view is particularly important and such a perspective is almost exclusively the domain of the government long term advance technology r and d does not happen in industry because the return on investment is years away and it does not happen in academia without sustained stable government funding with that perspective in mind i'd like to make a few observations to fulfill its broad mandate in civil and commercial space nasa should revitalize its advanced technology development program as a priority mission area its technology r and d mission should be independent of the major development programs and report to the administrator or some equivalent management structure or governance model to give it the stature equal to the agency's other mission areas in the review in our report we refer like organization and nasa to convey this thought it should engage the best science and engineering talent in the country wherever it resides in universities industry nasa centers and other government laboratories it should be relieved at least a first order of institution requirements to maintain core competencies at the ten nasa centers in order to ensure that the research can draw on the best ideas and talent wherever it should reside it should serve not just nasa but space customers including commercial space and other government agencies or departments much like its aeronautics program and its predecessor n a c a has done for almost one hundred years a comprehensive assessment of the current state of the art of advanced space technology would be helpful to ensure that any new investment in technology r and d would be building on the most advanced technology base currently available whatever governance model nasa chooses for managing a technology enterprise it needs to address technology relevance and transition the ultimate user community tournaments the products of technology r and d remains useful and relevant and technology translation is a process that must be managed with all the stakeholders involved in summary the country expects to be a leader pushing the frontiers of air and space applications and missions as called for in the space act but to do so nasa needs to replenish the underpinning technology that makes it possible that completes my brief summary of my remarks and be opened of course to questions later thank you dr holliday mr scully chairwoman giffords ranking member olson and members of the subcommittee thank you for the opportunity to appear today to discuss  technology development programs nasa has been at the forefront of aeronautics and space research since the early twentieth century the complex research missions that nasa has asked to do to explore and to to explore the unknown to serve a stimulus to innovation as a result nasa and its predecessor and ac a traditionally balance our technology activities to meet both the needs of our near term missions and our long term plans recent national academy reviews of nasa innovation and technology development endorsed increase d emphasis on innovative technologies and approaches to achieving broadly defined f a national goals these reports and others suggested that nasa should increase emphasis first in disruptive or gain chain or game changing technology and second in maturing technologies for flight and answers for the sub committee's question about the time frame for technology investment nasa believes the time frame for these early technology activities should be long enough to allow for revolutionary impact yet not too long so as to mass clear applicability to nasa or national needs or in the ten to twenty year time frame managing all of the investment areas will require a hybrid of management processes with strong agency wide planning and coordination one size does not fit all mission directorate investments focused on mission needs will be best managed within those directorates early stage innovation disruptive and strongly cross cutting investments are best served by an independent management structure still responsive to the needs of the mission with regard to the committee's question authorization legislation directing greater commitment to robust technology research and development initiatives three examples stand out in aeronautics we formulated the new environmentally responsible aviation project to develop technologies related to improving the air space system to be more environmentally friendly multiple collaboration's are underway with other federal agencies and private entities to make use of the space station as a national laboratory and in science the most recent annual competitions for instrument technology development emphasize cross cutting technologies if you meet the subcommittee asked how nasa develops and infuses game changing technology solutions without a dedicated long term technology program nasa does invest in a limited number of game changing technologies through its innovative partnership program and within our mission in engineering organizations examples include optical communications and large pressurized composite structures nasa routinely coordinates with other federal agencies to develop technologies and concepts of mutual interest the nasa aeronautics research for polio is strongly aligned with national aeronautics r and d policy in plan and the high level goals of the n r c the cable service and as many and as mentioned the space station national laboratory has been made of has been made available to other u s government agencies academic institutions private firms and nonprofit institutions for example nasa funded approximately two hundred fifty investigations related to light science research and exploration many of which leverage the additional funding from the national science foundation the national institute of health the department of defen and the department of energy our nation has made great progress throughout its history because of the enormously difficult challenges it is embraced the grand challenge to build intercontinental railway or the apollo lunar program not only utilize our best talent but also create new technologies inspired generations to pursue challenging goals creating new industries and ultimately improve our country in the world similar opportunities are in front of us now and nasa most assuredly can contribute  respond to any questions you or the other members of the subcommittee may have thank you at this point we're going to start our first round of questions and the chair recognizes herself for five minutes like to start with mr scully's you've heard testimony from the other panelists about some of the recommendations of why this is important and suggestions that this really matters and it needs to be reinstituted we've heard about the importance of immense technology development nasa but could you speak more specifically about the actor view of such a program how would nasa structure a short term a mid term and a long range term program in terms of the needs of the agency and its various mission directorate and also should we expect to see any changes in nasa technology development programs in the fiscal year the two thousand and eleven budget certainly in terms of the short term technologies and even the midterm technologies we have a our programs largely aligned with our missions so they tend to stay within the mission directorate and those are moving along fairly well as an example in the science mission directorate we invest about ten percent of their budget in technology development that's where we go up and look at the the instruments that we may need in the future or entry descent and landing as dr braun mentioned early we're going to mars with different payloads so for those as i mentioned in my testimony we would expect those to stay within the mission directorate the longer term technologies typically we would like to look at things that are cross cutting  that could affect more than one mission area aeronautics science or human spaceflight programs those don't tend to fit well within a mission directorate and we would think that if we went off to do those we would take a step back and look at a more coordinated process across our directorate whether that would be as dr khalid a mentioned and and to do that reported to the administrator or it would be put into some other organization i couldn't say at this time and to do your last question last part of the question earlier this year we recognized and we recognize before that that our investments and in technology have  change that change their focus to a more near term focus as opposed to the longer term focus for a variety of reasons so we asked the team to go often and look at what we could do so yes i will you will a can expect to see some changes in how nasa does technology in the future question i have is something in spacetime what our recent new administrator said to the general public and he said the president task him to make nasa inspire young people again and in that same vein and r report on the nyack basically went on to talk about that role of nasa is important super inspiring the public with this spirit of discovery of coverage and exploration so i guess i'd like to start with dr braun if you could elaborate on your committee's work in terms of what you regard as inspirational educational the contributions that nih has made and then turning to mr scully said that like to hear some of the elements in this technology program that we could very visible in public outreach campaign so to address your question directly i think the nih our committee field felt that not acting excellent job of actually earning positive public support for nasa through its actions and of inspiring students actually around the country to be a little more creative and to think outside the box that was certainly true in if i could add one other point  my discussions with students on campus you know that occurs most days you know when i'm not here in washington d c the students are really interested in the future much farther beyond the next five or ten years in general you know the people that are about to enter the workforce and they're going to be in the workforce for twenty to forty years and so visionary far reaching technology programs innovation and creativity are things that hold them in the engineering and science in general well i would agree with all of that the engineers and scientists want to think about the future they want to work on things for the future so our missions automatically inspire people to want to go up and do  that but specifically some things that we're doing today to help work that is we have a sub orbital program with sounding rockets and balloons as an example it's not strictly the technology part but it gives students  graduate students undergraduate students an opportunity to develop and experiment test it in a real flight type environment where there isn't overwhelming pressure to succeed as you would have with a with a mission so we find those opportunities and in any technology program we would do we want to engage in a bet any technology program we do today we do engage universities as well as industry but in particular the universities to get to graduate students and the undergraduate students engaged in these activities and in some cases even high school student nasa has a mission that in itself excites people and in so in many respects you have one of the easiest jobs i can imagine to to generate just kind of enthusiasm  that will lead people into engineering careers in science careers there's two things in it it starts very early there's two with it a young age there's two things that seem to be in our genetic wiring it kids love dinosaurs and they love space and and nasa can can really capture the interest on in space because they have real interesting problems to solve  in many respects defining those problems and then translating them into it into technical solutions is what jeering students and scientists like to wrestle with so  well i can only give you my opinion on that and i'm happy to do so i have course wasn't in nasa at the time what happened with the nyack is that it was envisioned originally as a cross cutting program outside the mission directorates that was seeking advanced technology and infusing them into nasa missions with the dissolution of the aerospace technology enterprise at nasa the former costar in two thousand and four moved into the exploration systems mission directorate and shortly after that with the budget crunch if you use my words with the budget crunch to get the constellation program going and getting humans back to the moon a pretty strong effort was made throughout the agency to squeeze down and remove many of the technology development programs not just the nyack nobody i'm fairly certain that nobody within nasa went directly after the little four million dollar program but in sweeping out a lot of these larger technology programs nyack was also removed in two thousand and seven every year to defend that investment because the end of the day it it it's a good faith investment in the future and if that if that advocate that champion for advanced technology isn't at the table it's pretty hard in budget crunch time with scarce resources nasa has faced and lower than the recent years to to defend program even though it's only four million dollars it's every every little bit is important for those answers and have a question for you and this is your statement your hollow a number of technology development activities ongoing across the agency's mission directorate but i noticed there was no mention of aries or ryan or constellation  for the record could you describe two or three type technology development activities associated with our future manned space flight program certainly there's a actually a number of activities that are in what we term our exploration systems mission directorate which is where the the constellation program is with a ryan and an aries and and the ground systems of support that some of the far reaching technologies that we're looking at there that can help not only space flight but others one is a composite crew module and that may sound a little different but most of everything that we have manufactured for human spaceflight has been made out of metallics aluminum or or steel of one type or another and there's certain benefits if we could go off and use structures that are made out of essentially plastics however we've been using them on the science missions for for many years because they give us certain benefits that allow us to make those missions much much better but we haven't applied them broadly to large structures because we haven't been able to find any theory that tells us how to build them so we decided that we needed to go up and understand that technology and develop that technology and chose module very similar to a ryan out of a composite structure we work that with all of our nasa centers basically because our science centers have lots of experience with composites langley research center has worked on composite structures for aircraft elements and marshall space flight center has worked on composites for rocket parts and you can go around to all of our various centers that have analytical techniques but we need it to be able to go off and build it so we went off and worked with industry and academia to build it test it as a pressurized system and we're in the process now of testing it the good news is we're developing a theory our tests are now going to see how well we did with that theory the good news is so far with the initial tests that we've done theory and application are turning out to to match very closely so that's very good applications are probably not for the crew module probably not for ryan but downstream if we want to send people to mars or the moon or libration points wherever it may be will allow us to make structures that are more efficient perhaps lighter and and better understood it has commercial applications already the the aircraft industry is looking at what we're doing in talking about large fuselages as opposed to just segments of the fuselage or the wings so it's proven to have a very it's a very good technology another area to follow on with what with dr braun said is going to mars ultimately we want to send humans to mars and dr braun said all of our technology is based on the one nine hundred seventy s when we went off and did viking the mars science lab is the largest thing we're going to land on mars and we are struggling with the fundamental physics of being able to get that done so what we've done partnering with all of our mission directorate is we've instrumented that spacecraft so that we can get some really good data finally on the atmospheric profile of what actually happens as we're descending through that that the martian atmosphere in addition if you look at m s l is about the same size as the iranian capsule so we're also going to use that in in helping to improve the design of the iranian capsule as well that just two examples of what we're doing in or associated with the constellation program that adds i mean those are pretty impressive examples of what we're doing with that technology and finally just like the close one question for all somehow i knew that question would come i have said in a number of different forums that i thought were an advanced high tech agency or any organization with a mission like nasa should fence or protect other resources to a level of about ten percent of the of the total budget for really in advanced innovative technology development that the fuzziness comes in how much of that is really near term midterm and fire term because technology development needs to be mission specific in the mission directorate says well but i would say a good starting point in answering that question would be ten percent of the budget at least building to that and that includes my written testimony i suggested that at least ten percent of nasa budget to chip or technology is required to dramatically advance entirely new aeronautics and space endeavors  and so the way i view the question is that that's ten percent above and beyond mission focused technologies nasa obviously needs to be doing mission focused technology development work examples that mr excellent examples of that and that work needs to continue but in addition to that work which could be jointly funded by a mission directorate and a cross cutting technology enterprise in addition to that work something like ten percent of the agency's budget devoted to new endeavors in aeronautics and space is about right for an agency whose goal is to push the frontier and to be looking at the boundaries thank you for that answer and if you feel comfortable answering the question we'd love to hear it well you know there are certain questions that i have to kind of dance around a little this is one of them clearly it's hard to disagree with with what was what was said research organization like nasa is doesn't need to invest and and we do and we have to determine those priorities in conjunction with you and and and the administration what i can say though on the very positive side is that in our aeronautics area most of that budget is research and development you can see that sort of with that that figures that were shown earlier in our other areas we have to go off  at the pressures of the mission often do cause some issues but that's exactly why we went off earlier this year to start looking at what we can do how can we organize and how can we you know find a better way to go up in advanced technolog being here today i just have a couple of questions the first one for any of the panel members nasa funding for research and technology for space craft systems for future missions has been significantly reduced over more than a decade the sum report of the review of u s human state human spaceflight plans committee stated that investment in a well designed and adequately funded space technology program is critical to enable progress in exploration nasa science mission also requires significant investment advancements in space craft technology to enable exciting new missions what increases in funding in critical areas such as power propulsion communication and other technologies is needed to assure that these technologies are developed to support future missions and in conjunction with that how will the research and technology funding be managed and dispersed well i guess i got about it the all of those things are critical for both as you said both the human space flight and the robotics missions it's it's hard to say how much and when i can tell you that we're looking at all of those areas today and perhaps give some examples and what we are doing and that should probably lead  to areas of further investigation clearly in communications where we are very limited we're limited interest your communications because the bandwidth of being used for other other services so we're moving toward optical communication and in space that's pretty easy you know not to worry about an atmosphere it ought to worry about clouds so we're making an investment in optical communications that will allow us to get more data back in a way that will be more stimulating to to the public  for sure but also get more for the scientific community today at mars we have a fleet of satellites in orbit around mars and on the surface and we cannot bring back all the data because we just don't have enough bandwidth with the  f with radio frequency links that we have so this is an area that we're spending a lot of time and propulsion if we're ever going to get humans to mars if we're ever going to get our probes to the far reaches of the solar system efficiently we need better propulsion relying on it for space missions the the dawn mission that's going to the asteroid belt is entirely dependent on ion propulsion and that's a very efficient propulsion that's being developed with industry but at principally the glenn research center and jet propulsion laboratory and it's now been adapted by some universities to go up and do missions so those are just a couple of examples but you're exactly right and we can go further in each of those areas to go off and find newer technologies and developments of technologies that will enable those missions i could add life support having humans live today we have humans that can spend six months on orbit at a time but they're close to the things really get bad for whatever reason they can come home and we start sending humans beyond certainly beyond my low earth orbit but even beyond the moon we need to have systems that will keep humans alive and be reliable for hundred two years and those are technologies that we're all looking at and can do more in thank you my last question nasa is in house research and technology expertise has been instrumental in both the sharing of advancement of critical technologies and supporting their demonstration and utilization and nasa missions these capabilities at nasa centers are essential for effectively managing nasa as technology portfolio it is also needed for developing and effectively leading partnerships with industry and universities what is and can be done for the to ensure that the in house civil service kept the tape ability is maintained and strengthened particularly in light of reduced centers service compliments over the past several years an aging workforce with a high percentage of retirement eligible personnel well certainly having a exciting programs  technology or missions is something that that's critical we believe we have the legislative authorities and the contracting tools to allow us to partner appropriately with industry and some examples you have again on your desk areas in aeronautics where we have some very strong relationships with with companies and other organizations on those we can generally speak only in terms of the general benefit because those companies want to maintain their competitive advantage in the space arena it's a little more obvious because there aren't as many organizations that are involved there but i think we have some good partnerships there i think i t further if you look at our innovative partnership program what we call i p p where we do a lot of work with the small business community we have a lot of examples where we've gone off and actually transitioned technology to two  yes ok thank you very much that's for anybody in a panel here out what's the situation where you drill doing research of federal government paying for this research and who ends up with the patents for new discoveries the course the credit for the patent goes to the individual that develop the technology and it depending on the agreements that are made if it's done in conjunction with the university or patel in conjunction with the industry how are those agreements are worked to and where the majority of the activity comes determines who the pattern owner will ultimately be do you think that the taxpayers are being well served and represented in those negotiations as to who owns if we finance research i mean to taxpayers finance research should we not demand that we have the financial benefit  meaning the patent benefit from financing that research well yes sir and that's what i was trying to get at in some of our cases where we have agreements it's only for them to use our test facilities not to to go off  we're putting in resources and they may reimburse us for those tests phyllis so if that's why i was getting at it depends if the government funds it we own the patent there's no question about that but that's what i need to do now it seems to me that would be a source of revenue that we could utilize when we talk about expanding the budget for people maybe we can make sure that we're receiving the benefits from from that  research is there any research being done on the space elevator concept i'd have to answer that one for the records for i don't know at this time i know that there's a prize or so there are not a prize there is a  further the space program well yes sir we do because while we're not sure about the moon we are very sure about mars we have touched ice on mars and we know there's a lot of water there so we do have activities that are related to what we call in situ resource utilization where we can take advantage of the resources that are available to us and then go off and use them in the case of water in particular we have fuel cells where we separate the water into energy something that we did ten years ago and are fifteen years ago not doing any more we actually have an experiment that we're looking at we're doing on the space station to do that i don't know what the current manifest is but a low one thing that people just damage i've talked about this about ten years ago i remember and it just seemed to me that have to have a lot of potential but a lot of most of the people don't think it has congressman thank you congressman miller donna edwards from maryland thank you for your testimony i actually wanted to follow up on a couple of things one is i do think it's and i appreciate your testimony to that as to the difficulty balancing long and near term goals and i guess there's stuff in between and investments and strategies in the because although i think a lot of the public really thinks about nasa as sort of the one place in government where people really are thinking well out into the future that because of budget and other kinds of of pressures  performance pressures that we perhaps are not looking as much into the future as as we need to be and that means in terms of investment in research in advanced technologies and so i wanted to actually follow up from the baucus question regarding intellectual property and intellectual property rights because i think that again is a tough balance to strike if you're trying to you know if you want to put out you know requests for really innovative research that you know a scientist a researcher an investigator wants to have some skin in the game and part of that skin is potentially that you know great patent down the down the line and so i wonder if you could comment for me about how we can strike that balance of intellectual property rights and sharing so that we get you know the greatest bang for the buck and benefit as taxpayers but also incentivize some of our researchers to do that cutting edge risk taking investigative work that we know should continue into into the future and then i'm also very interested to know  on that question there are technologies and research going on in commercial spaceflight in military space and it seems that there are lots of walls and barriers in terms of sharing that innovative intellectual property that's developed in each one of these fears that i think gets in the way you know for example of the technologies developed on the military in space side tha know some competitors around the world who are actually using some of those technologies and sharing them and commercializing them but right here in this country those same technologies can't be shared on our civilian and commercial thought and that's a real downer when it comes to making investments in research and so i wonder if you can give me some thoughts about that and what we might think about in the congress to try to mitigate that certainly if i can take the last question first the the barriers for us to work with the with our colleagues in other agencies and in the government are not so great we typically can do the quite well and oftentimes when you're doing a research or a technology activity it's not always known in the agencies which ones are there so we have to have much stronger dialogue and that is something that that i think we are all working on much more diligently now than we have been in the past but even in the past we had for instance a technology to get the exact name because it keeps on changing but the technology working group where our nasa chief engineer and and before that our chief technologist would work with the darpa colleagues and other colleagues in department defense or department of energy to go and find areas of common interest further on that second part to the area where we really find that we hurt ourselves and we could really use help as is with the international trafficking in arms regulations because that really limits our ability to take us develop capabilities and bring those overseas where it could bring benefit to our companies and even in the government it's very difficult in government to government interactions for us to take technologies that we have and make them available so that it's a us develop technology to us manage technology instead we was probably the the answer on the on the earlier question about the intellectual property rights probably be better if i took that one for the record and gave you all of the the types of contracts that we have some greater liberties for the inventor to go up and and they have property rights for those even if the government is funding it but it depends a lot a lot what that agreement says we have space act agreements and contracts and grants and they're all a little bit different so when i take for the record to get you a summary of what those are and what the international intellectual property rights are associated with those various ones i'd appreciate that thank the chair is going to ask a few questions or make a few comments really i think most of my questions have been have been answered this visual aid that was produced is absolutely impressive i would say that you could also put a hospital room with a bed and a patient on this very page and there would probably be greater than eighteen improvements that have happened because of nasa from the early early diagnosis of breast cancer because of the innovations of the hubble telescope to the miniatures asians of instruments that you mentioned to many many things that have happened over the last two decades as a direct result of the innovations at nassau that we did not know were going to occur and that's one of the great benefits of research and development one of the great benefits of science is that science has to prepare to discover and then after it discovers it discovers further what it did not know was there i think  that research is something he does when he doesn't know what he's doing and so i think we need to really emphasize the fact that research and development whether it's of the scav or a of the van allen radiation  whether it's our continuing effort to improve materials so that we can further discover whether it be a neutron scattering and a an elastic an elastic properties of radiation  material is absolutely critical to the advancement of science and nasa has been at the forefront of that and i might take just one liberty decided that i think it is the the absolute so of america both in its intellectual capabilities in equity and also in america's future and i appreciate each and every one of you being here and coming from the alabama fifth district in marshall space used to run nasa as office of aeronautics and space technology nasa separate those research field a few years ago with aeronautics placed its own mission directorate and space technology placed into the exploration systems mission director of there were good invalid reasons for having the to combine when you get to the term long term based research because when you're working c f d in advanced materials and in basic navigation and controls and that sort of the base disciplinary research in it's a long way from application to the people doing the research didn't always know they were spending on aeronautics r and d dollar space technology dollars they're working on important and exciting engineering and science problems and and so that  there was a there were certain number of advantages of having them together they had to be defended separately it gave enough critical mass that that person at the table that was that i spoke of was the champion defending advanced r and d had a big enough portfolio to to be at the table but that's not the only way to do it it is a lot of different governance that what is being done is relevant you get you get criticism that all there to stop playing in the sandbox and that is unfair a lot of times but it it points to the needed an organization that responsible for vance technology to make sure they're working with the user community working with the ultimate developers to make sure that what they're working on has a transition path that is relevant and and then that management approach or governance model is is is in place to to manage the transition  these great things that come out of the research that have to later be developed one thing and in being a director of darpa that i learned is you know we we quit doing the research when we had proof of concept if we prove to something was feasible that that was enough we were off doing something else a lot of work a lot of hard work and money goes in to taking those ideas in ever putting them to practice in so it it's not enough to to to develop the technology prove feasibility create this early technology development along in parallel to to manage the transition i don't know that on my watch in nasa that we always did a good enough job on those two points relevancy making sure that that that that that the ultimate user was involved and that we managed to transition from what was old code  are into the application and the application sometimes wasn't with nasa at all it was with industry available to thirty and forty years ago the coefficients of absorption and expansion and i can remember working out problems with my slide rule and taking me a great deal of time and it  and it depended on a development outside of the concept computer that allowed us to develop the c t scanner even though we had the concept proven many many decades before so i think as pure r and a pure science begins to develop we serendipitously discover things over here that apply here and we can always always predict that before we bring the hearing to a close i want to think thank each and every one of you for being here and thank thank the witnesses and also our participants the record will not remain open for two weeks for additional statements from the members in france or to any follow up questions a subcommittee may ask of the witnesses the witnesses or excuse in the hearing is now with your and