INCORPORATING SPACE INTO OUR ECONOMIC SPHERE OF INFLUENCE
Michael D. Griffin
Administrator
National Aeronautics and Space Administration
World Economic Forum
Jan. 26, 2007

Received the above and copied below from the NASA News list.
Here also is a link to it in PDF form.
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ADMINISTRATOR GRIFFIN'S SPEECHES

01.26.07 - Remarks at World Economic Forum 2007
Some of us gathered here tonight grew up during the Apollo era of the 1960s,
NASA's apotheosis. We watched science fiction movies and television shows
that made us believe that we--all of us and not simply a few
astronauts--could become space travelers.
+ View PDF (36 Kb PDF)
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Make it so!

Thanks for looking up with me.

Larry Kellogg

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RELEASE: Speech Transcript

INCORPORATING SPACE INTO OUR ECONOMIC SPHERE OF INFLUENCE
Michael D. Griffin
Administrator
National Aeronautics and Space Administration
World Economic Forum
Jan. 26, 2007

Good evening. Thank you for inviting me to speak tonight. It is not often
that an aerospace engineer is invited to speak to an economic forum.
However, I took a business degree along with my engineering and physics
coursework, and I appreciate the economic impact that space has on our
society, especially practical applications like communications, navigation,
weather and remote sensing satellites as well as the economic, national
security and scientific benefits. And this says nothing of the
less-quantifiable benefits of intellectual inspiration.

Some of us gathered here tonight grew up during the Apollo era of the 1960s,
NASA's apotheosis. We watched science fiction movies and television shows
that made us believe that we -- all of us and not simply a few astronauts --
could become space travelers. Arthur C. Clarke's and Stanley Kubrik's
masterpiece of science fiction "2001: A Space Odyssey" projected onto the
screen of our collective human consciousness a future for us where, by now,
hundreds of people would be living and working in space stations orbiting
the Earth and outposts would exist on our moon. We would be journeying to
other planets in our solar system, just as our European forbears came to
America looking for new beginnings. This space age vision of our future
proved illusory for our generation for two fundamental reasons: the
limitations of our economic resources and the limitations of technology.
Neil Armstrong's "giant leap for mankind" was not a journey that could be
sustained without a more concerted investment of time, resources and energy
than followed his seminal achievement on July 20, 1969.

But I believe that there are economic and technological reasons why we can
now begin to afford and sustain this Vision for Space Exploration in a
fashion where we "go-as-we-pay," and why the nations of the world making
such investments of time, resources and energy will find that the benefits
far outweigh the costs and risks involved. We have the technology and
economic wherewithal to incorporate the benefits of space into our sphere of
influence -- to exploit the vantage point of space and the space
environment, and the natural resources of the moon, Mars, and near-Earth
asteroids. Space exploration is not simply this century's greatest
adventure; it is an imperative that, if not pursued with some concerted
effort, will have catastrophic consequences for our society. I realize this
is a bold statement, so allow me to explain.

On the day before he was assassinated in Dallas, President John F.
Kennedy was in San Antonio, where he spoke about space exploration.
He invoked Irish writer Frank O'Connor, who told the story of "how, as a
boy, he and his friends would make their way across the countryside, and
when they came to an orchard wall that seemed too high, and too doubtful to
try, and too difficult to permit their voyage to continue, they took off
their hats and tossed them over the wall -- and then they had no choice but
to follow them." The United States, the European Union, Russia, China,
Japan, India, and others have tossed our caps over the wall of space
exploration.

In that same speech, President Kennedy recited several technical advances
from NASA's space program, explaining that "our effort in space is not, as
some have suggested, a competitor for the natural resources that we need to
develop the Earth. It is a working partner and a co-producer of these
resources." And he finished this speech with the recognition of the costs
and risks involved with space exploration: "We will climb this wall with
safety and with speed -- and we shall then explore the wonders on the other
side."

Even an emotionless engineer can be moved by President Kennedy's poetic
framing of the issues of space exploration, but since this is an economic
forum, let me now turn to the "dismal science." When President Kennedy spoke
those words in 1963, the Gross Domestic Product of the United States was
approximately $2.8 trillion, in FY2000 dollars. In 2005 it was approximately
$11 trillion in those same FY2000 dollars -- four times larger. In 1963, the
U.S. federal government spent approximately $600 billion, again in FY2000
dollars, with NASA's allocation representing 2.3 percent of that amount. At
the spending peak of the Apollo program, NASA represented 4.4 percent of the
federal budget. Today, with a U.S. federal budget of almost
$2.5 trillion, NASA's budget represents about 0.6 percent of that.

Clearly our economy has grown, our society has changed, and our priorities
for government spending have changed since 1963. Thus, in the latter half of
the 1960s and early 1970s, our nation's leadership decided that we should
not sustain such a high percentage of investment in the space program. In
these years, the priorities of the U.S. federal budget changed to
accommodate the escalating costs of the war in Vietnam, defense spending for
the Cold War, and Great Society programs. Today, the costs of the Global War
on Terrorism, Hurricane Katrina recovery, Social Security, and
Medicare/Medicaid dominate our federal government spending. The costs of our
nation's entitlement programs alone are projected to double in the next 10
years, from more than $1 trillion per year today to more than $2 trillion
per year, as the baby boomers like me begin to retire. By comparison, NASA's
budget of $16.2 billion for this year is somewhere in the realm of what
engineers call rounding error, at 0.6 percent of all federal spending.

Because of the magnitude of these changes over the last four decades, it is
important to view our nation's investment in our civil space and aeronautics
research program from this larger economic perspective, because some critics
have questioned the value proposition of even the current investment in
NASA. I believe that we must recognize that the development of space is a
strategic capability for our nations, and that we must bring the solar
system into our economic sphere of influence. And equally, I believe that
NASA must leverage the great economic engine of our nation and world.
Thus, the companies and countries that many of you represent can take
advantage of the trails we plan to blaze as we explore space, just as we
leverage the capabilities you create.

As a U.S. federal agency, NASA expects only inflationary growth in our
annual budget. Thus, we have adopted a "go-as-we-pay" approach for space
exploration, science missions and aeronautics research. Thus, the primary
pacing item for new ventures is our nation's ability to afford such
capabilities.

Over the next three years, our highest priority is to complete assembly of
the International Space Station and honor our agreements to our Russian,
European, Japanese and Canadian partners in this venture. It will not be
easy. The International Space Station is the world's greatest engineering
project, akin to such feats as the Great Wall of China, the pyramids of
Egypt, the Panama and Suez canals, or the sea walls of Venice. Friends of
mine who worked on the Apollo program have conveyed to me their belief that
the construction of the International Space Station is just as tough a job.

There are many critics of this space station, just as there were critics of
President Kennedy who called the Apollo program a "moondoggle." But I
believe that the greatest achievement of the International Space Station
partnership is the partnership itself, and that's a tough thing to
criticize. For over six years, astronauts and cosmonauts have been living
and working together onboard the space station. For the United States, the
station is a national laboratory in space, where we will conduct research to
make future exploration to other planets in our solar system possible. I
hope this partnership will reap even greater dividends as we explore space
together over many future generations. The unifying vision that forged this
partnership during the 1990s, prompted by the Gore-Chernomyrdin Commission,
is what we endeavor to carry forward today.

Our partnership has endured some hardships along the way, not least of which
was the Columbia accident. I hope and believe that those hardships have
built stronger bonds between us.

With the proper goals in mind, I believe the benefits of space exploration
far outweigh the risks. Among the most practical of these is our work with
hurricane-monitoring satellites, aircraft and sensors that allow
meteorologists to track such storms and predict their severity and impact.
Many people today do not even realize that their weather forecasts rely on
information from space assets.

Broader misconceptions exist. NASA spinoff technologies were never Tang,
Teflon or space pens. But while we actually can cite tens of thousands of
legitimate technology spinoffs, including medical devices, fuel cells and
batteries and even cordless tools, I would like to discuss a more seminal
point. I want people to realize the key areas where NASA's space endeavors
have created entirely new industrial capabilities that improve our
fundamental way of life.

For example, NASA is one of the major consumers of liquid hydrogen to fuel
our space shuttle and other rocket engines. Liquid hydrogen is also used in
the manufacturing of metals, glass, electronics and even foods. When you
hear the term "hydrogenated fats" applied to baked goods like pastries and
bread, it means that liquid hydrogen was one of the ingredients. NASA is
such a large consumer of liquid hydrogen that after Hurricane Katrina, we
returned several hundred thousand gallons to the nation's reserve and
delayed several space shuttle rocket engine tests to alleviate a national
shortage when our nation's liquid hydrogen production facilities and supply
lines were disrupted. Likewise, we are a major consumer of liquid oxygen.
Our huge demand market for these propellants sparked fundmental improvements
in the production and handling of these volatile substances. Today, the
ready availability of liquid oxygen allows firefighters, emergency response
teams and nursing homes to carry on their backs or in suitcases portable,
hand-carried oxygen tanks. In the 1960s, only select hospitals could supply
oxygen, in hazardous oxygen tents.

I am sure that many of you would agree with me that the greatest revolution
in our productivity and way of life has been the development of the personal
computer, internet and various handheld communication devices. Thirty-five
years ago, engineers like me used three pieces of wood and a piece of
plastic that moved -- the slide rule -- to make calculations. Thirty years
ago, 1,000 transistors could fit on a silicon chip; today, it's 100 million.
The cost of such chips has dropped by a factor of 100,000. Few people know
that the development of the first microprocessors was born of a competition
between Fairchild and Intel in the 1960s, to build components small enough
to fit in NASA spacecraft. This straightforward NASA technical requirement
spawned a whole new industry that grew in ways few, except perhaps Gordon
Moore, could predict. Necessity is the mother of invention, and I believe
that we are at our most creative when we embark on bold ventures like the
space program.

So, with the economic growth and technology development we have seen since
the 1960s, I believe that we are now entering a Renaissance period of space
exploration where we can realize the vision that eluded us earlier. And as
in the Renaissance, wealthy individuals will play a role in advancing the
work of our architects, engineers and technicians. These will be
entrepreneurs who have made their wealth in other endeavors -- Jeff Bezos
from Amazon, Bob Bigelow from Budget Suites, Richard Branson from Virgin and
Elon Musk of Paypal fame are examples. These gentlemen and others have put
their personal time, resources and energy behind the notion that many more
people can have personal experience in space than do so today. It is one
thing to view pictures of Earth from the vantage point of space, even on an
IMAX screen, but it is another thing entirely to see it with one's own eyes.
Many friends of mine have spoken of the epiphany they experienced from this.


But let me be clear. NASA's job is not to sponsor space travel for private
citizens. That is for private industry. My hope is the reverse; that when
the public can purchase rides into space, NASA can leverage this capability.
Likewise, I hope that one day NASA can leverage the expertise of companies
not unlike FedEx or UPS today, to meet our cargo needs for the space station
and future lunar outposts. And one day, maybe, astronauts onboard our Orion
crew exploration vehicle on their way to the moon and Mars can top off on
liquid hydrogen from commercially available orbiting fuel stations.

In the process of building these new space capabilities, these
entrepreneurs, along with NASA and other companies, are hiring more
aerospace engineers. I believe that a key measure of a society's economic
growth is the extent to which we are educating a technically literate people
who can build the infrastructure to advance that society. It is deeply
troubling to me when education statistics for the United States indicate
there are more bachelor's degrees in psychology being awarded than
engineering degrees. I am sure that even the economics majors here can
appreciate my concern!

Again, NASA hopes to leverage, to the maximum extent possible, the
capabilities that space entrepreneurs hope to create. A few years ago, when
I was in the private sector working at InQTel, I helped fund a small
software company seeking a better approach to visualizing satellite imagery.
Over the years, that company grew into the backbone for Google Earth. Now,
we hope to "spin-in" that capability to visualize imagery from other planets
in our solar system, like the moon and Mars, using data from various NASA
satellites and the Mars rovers. By invoking such commercial capabilities,
NASA can leverage the funding of other investors to our mutual benefit.

In conclusion, I would like to leave you with a final thought as to what
might happen if we do not explore space, if we do not follow the cap we
tossed over the wall in the 1960s. Last month in the journal Science,
researchers examining the primordial material returned by NASA's Stardust
space probe found that some of that material could not have come from the
Kuiper Belt in the outer reaches of our solar system, but instead could only
have come from our sun's core. Some of that material was even older than our
own sun. The history of life on Earth is the history of extinction events,
with evidence for some five major such events in the history of the Earth.
The last of these occurred approximately 65 million years ago, when the
dinosaurs that dominated the Earth for over 160 million years suffered a
catastrophic extinction. It is believed that this event was caused by a
giant asteroid which struck Earth in the Gulf of Mexico, triggering
tsunamis, tectonic shifts and radically changing Earth's climate.

The brief history of humans is next to nothing compared to the history of
other life on Earth, and even less so compared to the age of our solar
system or of the universe. Our species hasn't been around long enough to
have experienced a cataclysmic extinction event. But they will occur,
whether we are ready for them or not.

In the end, space exploration is fundamentally about the survival of the
species, about ensuring better odds for our survival through the
promulgation of the human species. But as we do it, we will also ensure the
prosperity of our species in the economic sense, in a thousand ways. Some of
these we can foresee, and some we cannot. Who could claim that he or she
would have envisioned the Boeing 777, after seeing the first Wright Flyer?
And yet one followed the other in the blink of an historical eye.

For this and many other economic and scientific reasons, we must explore
what is on the other side of that wall, walk in the footprints of Neil
Armstrong, and make that next giant leap for mankind.

Thank you.

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WHAT THE MIND CAN CONCEIVE, AND BELIEVE, IT WILL ACHIEVE - LRK

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