THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, December 2, 1995 TAG: 9512020610
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: D1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: STAFF AND WIRE REPORT
DATELINE: NORFOLK LENGTH: Medium: 69 lines
According to NASA administrator Daniel S. Goldin, Langley Research Center is the smartest kid in the space agency's class. But that won't protect the Hampton aeronautics lab from current or future budget slashing.
``Is Langley's future assured? No,'' Goldin said, speaking Friday at a luncheon meeting of the Hampton Roads Chamber of Commerce, and in a later interview. ``We have to prove ourselves every day. . . . Congress and the American people have the right to be fickle.
``But I don't think Langley will have a problem meeting any world-class test.''
Langley will continue to be NASA's ``lead'' center for airplane-related studies, Goldin said.
To meet pending budget dictates, NASA is about halfway through a process that will carve 55,000 civil servants and contractors from the agency's payroll by 2000. Even so, Goldin claimed that NASA's output is climbing.
``The space budget is going down,'' he said. ``NASA used to measure its robustness by the size of that budget. But that's an input, that's not an output.
``I've asked NASA employees to rate themselves by how much they're touching America, how much science they're producing,'' he said.
Already, he said, NASA's digital imaging technology on the Hubble space telescope has entered the marketplace, helping physicians make more accurate interpretations of cancer signals in mammograms.
NASA also is looking toward launching several dozen weather satellites over the next decade that will make forecasting faster and more reliable. By November 1997, the agency will begin construction of the international space station.
A robot probe of Mars, which will try to determine if the planet has fossil remains of primitive life, is planned for late next year, he said.
And the agency eventually hopes to have the capability to produce detailed photographs of any Earth-like planet elsewhere in the universe, if one exists.
Goldin asserted that NASA-developed technology will keep revolutionizing the future - and it's available to anyone that can use it.
``What we're trying to do is push the boundaries on the levels of inquiry that the human mind has, to inspire people . . . to enrich the quality of life and help the economy,'' he said.
Goldin and astronaut Wendy Lawrence spent the day in southeast Virginia, visiting two Chesapeake companies that already use NASA research in manufacturing. They also spoke at Great Bridge and Oscar Smith high schools.
``The future is bright. Technology is growing in leaps and bounds,'' said Lawrence, who flew on the space shuttle in March. ``The world that they will be a part of will be very different from the world in which we grew up, in terms of technology developing so quickly.''
A former Norfolk-based Navy helicopter pilot, Lawrence showed the students a film of her space mission.
``Here, for me, was the benefit of staying in school and studying hard, the privilege of being able to go up, fly around our Earth, orbit around it for 16 1/2 days,'' she said.
``It's never too early to start our students thinking about careers in technology,'' said Rep. Norman Sisisky, D-4th, the visitors' host.
To people who demand an advance justification for spending on space research, he said, the answer is that the work pays off down the road.
``We can't cut back on long-term investment,'' he said. ``Today, we're reaping the rewards of what we developed 15 years ago. . . . The future is just filled with unbelievable opportunities.'' by CNB