Mr. DAVIS. Mr. Wydler?

Mr. WYDLER. Is there a regular meeting of NASA representatives, representatives from your department, and the military, regarding this entire program?

Dr. SINGER. Yes, sir. There are two coordinating groups or committees one primarily for the research and spacecraft aspects which is advisory to NASA, (JMSAC); and the other for user requirements. This is advisory to the Weather Bureau.

This is how we, in part, carry out our function of collecting and coordinating user requirements.

Mr. WYDLER. I mean, because it would appear to me what you are doing, in effect, is taking pictures of Earth which would seem to me to have a very strong useful purpose from a military point of view and I just wondered-I wanted to make sure as I understood it that the military was a part of this team that was developing this satellite - and the techniques of photography and so forth that are being developed here.

Dr. SINGER. I should explain that the satellite does not have any direct military importance in the sense that the pictures from the satellite do not have a high enough resolution to be useful for direct military purposes.

Mr. WYDLER. I understand that's the situation today.

Dr. SINGER. We do not contemplate increasing the resolution of the satellite for one very simple reason-it costs too much money.

If you increase the resolution you have to handle much more data and the cost of data handling is extremely high. Since we are interested in meteorology, we would like, if possible, to strike a better balance between resolution and cost. In effect, this would make our resolution worse.

In fact, we would like to put our resolution at just the right pointreduce it just enough to enable us to extract all the useful meteorological information without having to pay for any excess baggage. This is one of our real tough jobs.

Mr. WYDLER. I mean, what excess baggage are you paying for now? Dr. SINGER. We may be, at this time, getting a resolution that is higher than what we really need to do an adequate job of global weather analysis.

Mr. WYDLER. What is that costing you?

Dr. SINGER. It will cost us, approximately, over $1 million a year just to ship the data from Alaska to Washington.

Mr. WYDLER. Costing you, or costing who—a million dollars a year!

Dr. SINGER. The taxpayer, eventually; but it will come out of my budget.

Mr. WYDLER. Out of your budget? You pay that to who?

Dr. SINGER. TO NASA. They, in turn, contract with communication groups for the necessary facilities.

Mr. WYDLER. You think you can do away with that?

Dr. SINGER. Not completely, but we'd like to see whether we can save money by reducing the communication costs.

We might be able to do this by transmitting the data in degraded form.

We even talked about the future possibility of doing some of the data analyzing inside the satellite itself. We must find a more eco

nomical means to transmit pictures to the ultimate users of weather data.

This is why the Direct Read-Out Satellite is such an economical solution.

Mr. WYDLER. Actually, NASA itself is acquiring a lot of this data, isn't it, and bringing it down and giving it to you to be processed. Doesn't NASA perform that part of the job?

Dr. SINGER. We reimburse them for this.

Mr. WYDLER. Are they collecting some of this data you don't need, as well as A.T. & T., that you are talking about?

Dr. SINGER. The resolution of the camera determines the amount of data that you get every day. It amounts now to 5 billion bits. We think we will need that much data. One of my major jobs right now is to figure out ways of decreasing the volume of data flow. One way is to see if we cannot extract adequate meteorological information from less data.

Let's assume that the cost of shipping data is roughly proportional to the amount of data. If we could cut the amount to 1 billion bits from 5 billion, we would only have to pay one-fifth as much for shipping, a proportionally less amount for analyzing it, and a still lesser amount for distributing it.

Mr. DAVIS. Let me point this out, Dr. Singer, it's not a question of whether NASA or the Weather Bureau gets the data as respects the cost of transmitting the data or communicating it, is it?

Dr. SINGER. No, sir.

Mr. DAVIS. It's just a matter of the fact the only good way we have of transmitting data from Alaska to the United States is over the A.T. & T. system.

Dr. SINGER. It's not commercial all the way. I believe in Alaska we use military facilities.

Chairman MILLER. The Department of Defense handles all of the communication up there and out of there it comes directly in here? Of course, this is one of the things you are working for.

In future satellites you will develop a camera most likely that will give you the stuff you want and won't have this high resolution? Dr. SINGER. We may need this resolution. We will learn from experience.

Chairman MILLER. That is something no one can tell about. We are still working in a vacuum. Beginning to see what we need, but we haven't the tools for working it yet.

Dr. SINGER. I thought you would be interested in knowing we are doing this type of thinking. We are not satisfied with the state of things as they are, but are examining it carefully-even now before we have the first Nimbus-to know whether we can actually optimize the cost-to-benefit ratio.

Mr. HECHLER. Dr. Singer, you get around a good deal.

I wondered if you heard any rumors, maybe the Department of Defense might be interested in developing a meteorological satellite? Dr. SINGER. No, sir. It seems to me the Department of Defense requirements have been adequately stated to us.

They are going to be stated to us again formally through the Joint Meteorological Group which has the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Weather Bureau on it, I think the national system, the one we are working on, will satisfy all the defense requirements.

Mr. DAVIS. Thank you.

Chairman MILLER. I thought we were closing.

Mr. WYDLER. I just have one little question, if you know the answer. Can you tell me what the average GS rating of the people that work in your department is?

Dr. SINGER. No, sir, I cannot.

Mr. WYDLER. Can you supply that for me?

Dr. SINGER. Yes, I certainly can.

(The information requested is as follows:)

Average grade of G8 positions at the National Weather Satellite Center

NOTE.—Includes only permanent positions supported by appropriated funds. An additional 35 positions with an average grade of (78-10 are financed by NASA under reimbursable arrangements for meteorologica support of the Mercury and Gemini programs

Mr. WYDLER. Thank you.

Mr. DAVIS. Mr. Chairman?

Chairman MILLER. Mr. Chairman, if you are closing—
Dr. SINGER. I wish the grades were higher.

Mr. WYDLER. I realize that.

Chairman MILLER. I want to express my appreciation for the work Dr. Singer is doing. Want to congratulate him on it, and we are very happy--the country should be very happy, Doctor, that you are with the Weather Bureau.

Dr. SINGER. Thank you.

Chairman MILLER. And that you are working, you and your staff, are working on this program.

It is a refreshing one and to my way of thinking, if nothing comes out of the space effort except the fact that we may be able to-that we will be able to resolve the weather within a limited period of years, it would pay for the cost of this whole effort.

Dr. SINGER. Thank you, sir. We certainly feel that way.

Mr. HECHLER, Mr. Chairman, I'd like to add my compliments, too, I think you and your staff and your associates have done a really outstanding job in the National Weather Satellite Center.

Dr. SINGER. Thank you.

Mr. Davis. I'd like to say all the members of the subcommittee subscribe to, fully, what Chairman Miller and the chairman of the subcommittee has expressed.

On behalf of the subcommittee, I want to thank you for coming before us and giving such interesting and valuable testimony today. At this time the committee will adjourn.

(Whereupon at 12:22 p.m. the committee was adjourned.)

1964 NASA AUTHORIZATION

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 3, 1963

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,

COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE AND ASTRONAUTICS,

SUBCOMMITTEE ON APPLICATIONS AND

TRACKING AND DATA ACQUISITION,
Washington, D.C.

The subcommittee met at 10 a.m., pursuant to call, in room 214-B, Longworth Building, Hon. John W. Davis (member of the subcommittee) presiding.

Mr. DAVIS. Gentlemen, I am going to adhere to our policy of starting virtually on time, even though I am the only member of the subcommittee at this point. So I will call the committee to order.

I am glad to have you back, Dr. Seamans, and also am glad to welcome Dr. Tepper as a witness today. I suppose you are expecting to make the first statement today, Dr. Seamans?

Dr. SEAMANS. No, Dr. Tepper is prepared to make a statement on the meteorological program, and we will proceed if you wish. Mr. DAVIS. Very well.

(The biographical sketch of Dr. Morris Tepper is as follows:)

Dr. Morris Tepper, Director of Meteorological Systems in the Office of Applications, joined the headquarters staff of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration on April 20, 1959. Previously he was Chief of the Severe Local Storms Research Unit, U.S. Weather Bureau.

Born in Palestine in 1916, Dr. Tepper came to the United States in 1922 and became a citizen in 1926. He earned a bachelor of arts degree in 1936 and a master of arts degree in 1938 from Brooklyn College, and a Ph. D. from Johns Hopkins University in 1952.

Dr. Tepper joined the Air Force in 1943 and served as weather officer in the Pacific theater of operations until 1946 when in August he joined the staff of the U.S. Weather Bureau, Washington, D.C., as research meteorologist. In 1951, he became Chief of the Severe Local Storms Research Unit.

From 1952 to 1959, he taught fluid mechanics and dynamic meteorology at the Graduate School, U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Dr. Tepper has written many papers in technical journals on theoretical and experimental aspects of severe local storms and on meteorological satellites. In 1950, he was the joint recipient of the Meissinger Award of the American Meteorological Society for his work on the application of hydraulic analogy to meteorological problems. In 1961 he received the Distinguished Alumni Award from Brooklyn College.

His professional memberships include the American Meteorological Society, the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics and the Washington Academy of Sciences. He sits on several National and Government committees which plan and coordinate activities in the atmospheric sciences.

Dr. and Mrs. Tepper (the former Sandra Levin) and their sons, Andrew and Bradford, live in Silver Spring, Md.

STATEMENT OF DR. ROBERT C. SEAMANS, JR., ASSOCIATE ADMINISTRATOR, NASA; ACCOMPANIED BY DR. MORRIS TEPPER, DIRECTOR, METEOROLOGICAL SYSTEMS, OFFICE OF APPLICATIONS

Dr. TEPPER. Mr. Chairman and members of the subcommittee, I am happy to have this opportunity to appear before you again to discuss the programs of the Office of Meteorogical Systems.

In this discuss, I shall begin with a few remarks on the objectives of our program and then proceed with a detailed description of the flight and supporting research activities that we are developing in order to fulfill our responsibilities inherent in the statement of objectives. I shall try to emphasize our plans for the coming fiscal year, in order that you may note how these plans fit into the overall program pattern (fig. 35).

We are currently actively engaged, together with the U.S. Weather Bureau, in the development of an operational meteorological satellite system. This system is to be used by the Weather Bureau in the fulfillment of its responsibilities for the analysis and forecasting of the

weather.

I shall refer later to the extent to which TIROS data have assisted in this regard.