John Glenn

Mr. GLENN

Mr. GLENN. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. GLENN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. GLENN. Mr. President, I must oppose the amendment offered by my colleague from Wyoming, Senator Thomas. The amendment would require cost comparisons and cost and performance benchmarks before any Federal agency can provide any other Federal agency with property or services. I am a very strong supporter of increasing the efficiency of Government. Much of my effort over the last few years has been devoted to exactly that--passing the Chief Financial Officer Act, expanding inspectors general, and with the new procurement legislation we passed that was the work of not only the White House in the last administration but this administration and our Governmental Affairs Committee, as well as people in the Pentagon. So we have a track record of working in these areas of increasing the efficiency of Government and along with it of having a greater reliance on the private sector which we have provided in some of the new procurement legislation for providing goods and services to the Government. In spite of that, I have difficulty supporting this amendment. Its impact, I do not think, has been completely reviewed and I think it is unnecessary and perhaps too broad. Let me go into some of that in a little more detail. First, I must oppose the amendment because a floor amendment on an appropriations bill does not provide an adequate opportunity in which to consider this far-reaching proposal, and it is, indeed, a far- reaching proposal. The Governmental Affairs Committee, as I think the proponent has already mentioned, actually has a hearing scheduled for next week, September 19, on Senator Thomas' related bill, S. 1724. I know we have had several hearings put off, and I understand that, and I understand the frustrations of people when they do not get appropriate hearings in committee to go ahead and opt for direct floor action. But consideration in committee will consider that legislation that also addresses Government and private sector issues. Consideration by the committee with substantive jurisdiction is needed before this proposal should be considered on the Senate floor. To bring the amendment to the floor when the sponsor has a hearing in only 1 week before the appropriate committee I do not feel is the best way to proceed, the best informed way to proceed on this issue. Second, it is my feeling, having been into some of these things over the last several years, the amendment is unnecessary. The economy act at section 1535 of title XXXI of the United States Code already requires that an agency head determine that goods or services cannot be provided as conveniently or cheaply by a commercial enterprise before going to another agency for those goods or services. The cost and performance requirement of the present amendment would on their face have basically the same result as the economy act. The relation of the amendment to the current law is exactly the sort of issue that should be discussed at a committee hearing. I think we also need to examine the relation of the OMB regulations required by the amendment to OMB's circular A-76 that currently governs agency cost comparisons with private sector goods and services. To accept an amendment in the Chamber that on its face largely duplicates existing law and regulation is not the best way to proceed. This overlap also concerns me with regard to the franchise fund pilots created by the Government Management Reform Act, GMRA, of 1994, which is Public Law 103-356. That act was a bipartisan effort of the Governmental Affairs Committee, and it passed unanimously in the Senate. The GMRA, the Government Management Reform Act, franchise fund pilots open up competition between agency service providers and the private sector for common administrative services. This program uses basic market force principles to search for better, quicker, and cheaper services. OMB is currently overseeing this program, and we should not enact new legislation that would affect it until we hear from OMB as to how this competition project is working. My third objection to the amendment is that it is too broad. For example, in its original version it had no exemption for national security emergencies or danger to public health or safety. Let me say right there that we had a letter from the Under Secretary of the Navy, John Hamre, who is working in these areas of better efficiency over in the Defense Department, and he felt it really gave a lot of trouble in this particular area. I ask unanimous consent that his letter be printed in the Record.

Mr. GLENN. I object.

Mr. GLENN. I understand though that this will be modified to accommodate that problem. I have not seen the modification yet specifically, but I understand that Senator Thomas has modified his amendment to address concerns raised by the Department of Defense concerning national emergencies and that was one of the problems. I understand the amendment will provide an exemption for national security contingencies. Maybe that will solve the problem, maybe it will not, but that is a concern about the amendment, and I think the scope of it is still unclear. If enacted into law in its original version, the amendment would appear to prohibit, for instance, some other things, and I do not know whether these are covered under contingencies or not. It would appear to prohibit the CIA from contracting with NSA or DIA, the National Security Agency or the Defense Intelligence Agency, for classified goods or services--for example, a spy satellite or equipment--without performing cost comparisons and benchmarks. While OMB might try to provide for such exemptions in the regulations required by the amendment, the amendment, as I understood it, provides no limitations on its comprehensive scope. I am also concerned about the amendment's references to ``enforcing any policy or any authority in any other form.'' I put that in quotes, concerned about the amendment's reference to ``enforcing any policy or any authority in any other form.'' I am not certain what this might include. It could be interpreted to cover the budget. It would seem even to cover apportionment of funds. After all, when OMB apportions funds, it conveys an authority to outlay funds. How would this impact on interagency activities? I am not sure. Maybe it would be good. Maybe it would be bad. But these terms do concern me. I do not believe we should enact into law such an overarching requirement, a very major piece of legislation, without careful consideration of its scope and necessary exemptions. The broad language of the amendment might also cover FFRDC's. Many times agencies contract with another agency such as DOE for goods or services to be provided by FFRDC, and this arrangement would seem to be covered by the amendment. I do not believe the Senate has sufficiently considered this proposal in order to subject the National Labs, the Center for Naval Analysis, and other FFRDC's with the blanket requirements of this amendment, and they would be affected by it. They could not help but be affected by it. Finally, I am concerned that there could be other situations that this amendment would needlessly burden with reporting and study requirements. There could be instances in which an agency contracts for goods or services that another agency procures from other sources, even the private sector. There are also revolving funds and many interagency reimbursable activities that would appear to be covered by the amendment. And to subject all such activities to the terms of this amendment, without certainty about the impact, concerns me very much. Again, the sponsors of the amendment may hope that OMB will provide the right exemptions for the right cases. But the text of the amendment is very, very comprehensive. Again, this is just another reason why I think we should not enact into law legislative language of such broad scope--not today, anyway. Next week, OMB's Deputy Director for Management, John Koskinen, will testify before the Governmental Affairs Committee on various OMB and other agency initiatives to increase agency reliance on the private sector. That is one of the subjects of the hearing, and to create incentives for agencies to search for more economical ways to procure goods and services. That hearing will be very informative as to this debate. It should include this amendment, and that is where I think we should consider this amendment, not here on the appropriations legislation. So I think I do not see any problem with recommending to my colleagues, with something of this broad a scope--and this is not an insignificant amendment, this is a major step in whatever direction it would be leading and is very, very far-reaching--I think, to wait 1 week until the head of OMB can give his testimony and give his opinion on this and indicate to us how this would operate at the executive branch level. It seems to me, that is not a delay that is intolerable. For these reasons, I urge my colleagues to oppose the amendment. I think it is very far-reaching. It is not an innocuous little amendment; it is one that is very far-reaching, and after we know the scope of it better, it might be something I could well support. But I would like to have Mr. Koskinen's testimony on it and have it before the committee so we could explore, in a little bit more detail, the ramifications of this or the implications of it before we vote on it in an appropriations bill acting on the floor today. Mr. President, for all those reasons, I oppose the legislation and hope my colleagues support that position. I yield the floor.

Mr. GLENN

Mr. GLENN. Mr. President, I yield back the balance of my time, and assume my colleague does. Mr. KERREY addressed the Chair.

Mr. GLENN. Mr. President, it is my understanding we will each use about 5 minutes, and then I think the two leaders want to propose a unanimous-consent request after that. So if we can proceed on that basis, would that be satisfactory with my colleague?

Mr. GLENN. I ask unanimous consent that we have 5 minutes on a side to wrap this up, and then we will probably go to a vote after that.

Mr. GLENN. Mr. President, I want to respond briefly to the comments my colleague made a moment ago. This is a broad act. He said the Economy Act of 1982 is really not working and that is one reason we are putting this in. I don't like putting other legislation that might not work on top of legislation he says is already not working. Let's make work the legislation that is in law now. I am all for that. Basically, it does what we are proposing here. In fact, I have a copy of that Economy Act of 1982 here, and one of the things provided under section 1335 under ``agency agreements,'' part 4 of paragraph (A) says: ``The head of the agency decides ordered goods or services cannot be provided as conveniently or cheaply by a commercial enterprise already required.'' I agree that should be lived up to. So then we come in with the legislation that my colleague and friend, Senator Thomas, says is not as broad as I am interpreting it to be, and yet the words in it say that ``except as provided in subsection (B)''--which I will get to in a moment--``none of the funds appropriated under any other act may be used by OMB or any other agency to publish, promulgate or enforce any policy, regulation, circular or any rule or authority in any other form that would permit any Federal agency to provide a commercially available property or service to any other Department of Government unless the policy, regulation, circular or other rule meets the requirements in subsection (B).'' Subsection (B) says 120 days after this OMB will prescribe regulations as required, subject to the following, which shall include the following: A requirement for comparison between the costs of providing the property or service concerned through the agency concerned and the cost of providing such property or service through the private sector. That is a mammoth requirement for any law or regulation to come out under. The (B) part of that, which is the last part, is a requirement for cost and performance benchmarks relating to the property or service provided relative to comparable services provided by other Government agencies and contractors permitting the oversight of this--and so on-- agency concerned with the Office of Management and Budget. That is a very, very broad-reaching, extremely broad-reaching, amendment. I would say it is true, it is already covered under the Economy Act of 1982, as I quoted just a moment ago, and the best thing I would advise is we bring this to the attention of Mr. Koskinen, who is going to appear before the committee next week, that we ask his opinion about how broad-gauged this is and why he is not already enforcing the Economy Act of 1982. That is the way to proceed, as I see it, in good Government, not just to automatically pass something that does the same thing that is not being adhered to in earlier legislation. Mr. President, I suggest we have that as our method of procedure. I am all for efficiency in Government, but I am not just for passing one law and covering up deficiencies in carrying out a law that is already on the books and should be adhered to. I reserve the remainder of my time. How much time do I have remaining, Mr. President?

Mr. GLENN. That will be fine.

Mr. GLENN

Mr. GLENN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. GLENN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. GLENN

Mr. GLENN. Mr. President, I rise in opposition to the conference report on the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 1997. I oppose the conference report for many of the reasons I opposed the Senate bill. Unfortunately, the conference report is in many respects worse than the Senate bill. The conference report includes $11.2 billion in unrequested funds, including almost $1 billion in additional funding for ballistic missile defense, hundreds of millions of dollars for unrequested military construction projects, and billions of dollars for weapons programs the Pentagon does not think it needs. Another troubling aspect of the conference report involves land conveyances. I have been very concerned by the yearly practice in which Members of Congress include special land conveyances in the Defense authorization bill enabling the transfer of Federal property outside of the requirements of the Federal Property Act of 1949. Having been unable to curb outright the practice of making these sweetheart land deals, I have worked to ensure that the properties are screened by the General Services Administration to make sure that there is no other Federal interest in the properties. The conferees found the idea of protecting the Federal taxpayers' assets so distasteful that they refused to require a Federal screening for the land conveyances contained in the House bill. This decision is unacceptable in my view and I did not sign the conference report in large part due to this decision. In addition, the conferees adopted a provision from the Senate bill which affords special retirement rights to a select group of employees affected by base closure. There has been no demonstrated need for this authority that will cost the American taxpayer millions of dollars in the out years and it is unfair to the hundreds of thousands of other Federal employees who have been affected by ongoing efforts to downsize the Government. I would also mention my concern with a provision in the conference report that terminates the defense business operations funds [DBOF] in the year 1999. The purported reason for this provision as I understood from its proponents is to instill more discipline in the Defense Department's financial management. I have been concerned about the state of the Government's financial management for years. I have worked to enact legislation creating the inspectors general and the chief financial officers. I have held numerous and long detailed hearings on the condition of DBOF. I agree that the Pentagon has an obligation to the American taxpayer to focus more attention on getting its financial house in order. But, I do not agree that terminating DBOF will accomplish anything other than to create chaos where we should be seeking progress. In addition, I have concerns about section 1033 of the conference report which significantly expands an existing program within the Department of Defense regarding the transfer of excess personal property. The Senate bill was silent on this issue. The House bill however expanded an existing DOD program which enables State and local agencies involved in drug enforcement activities to have a preference to obtain excess DOD personal property. The House bill expanded this program to enable all law enforcement activities to have this preference. Beyond that the conference added counterterrorism as an additional preferential category. Now I bow to no one in my willingness to take action to enforce our drug laws and to fight terrorism. And it may be entirely appropriate for excess small arms and ammunition to be made available to law enforcement agencies for these purposes. However, I have serious concerns regarding the conference's approach. In particular, I have questions about the effect this provision will have on other entities entitled to receive excess property as a public benefit. I'm speaking not about small arms parts, but about computers, furniture, vehicles, and other equipment. Under current law potential beneficiaries to this equipment include, State agencies, hospitals, schools, the homeless, and other worthy causes. I do not believe that this concern was adequately considered in the conference. I intend to work with other Senators and Congressmen who share my concerns to clarify how the Secretary of Defense intends to implement this provision, and to take corrective legislative action if necessary. The conferees also dropped a provision from the Senate bill that would allow women who are serving in the military or who are servicemembers' dependents from obtaining abortions in overseas military medical facilities. We have debated this issue repeatedly and I am very sorry the conferees again chose not to afford women who are stationed overseas the same basic rights available to women living in the United States. Finally, I mention a number of House provisions that were dropped in conference: the so-called multilateralization and successor state provisions affecting the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, the provision to repeal the don't-ask, don't-tell policy and the provisions relating to servicemembers diagnosed with HIV. I am genuinely pleased that these provisions were dropped from the conference report. However, I do not believe the mere elimination of completely unacceptable provisions from the conference report is a sufficient reason to support the conference report. humanitarian demining

Mr. GLENN

Mr. GLENN. Mr. President, I will vote today in opposition to the military construction appropriations conference report. The conference report adds $850 million to the President's budget request. Like its authorization counterpart, virtually all of the projects added to the budget request are the result of requests made by Members of the House and Senate. I am gratified that some discipline has been adopted in this annual process in that added projects now meet what I consider to be minimal requirements like meeting a national security requirement and being in the Pentagon's 5-year plan. Nevertheless, I cannot support a process that results in hundreds of millions of dollars being added to the military construction budget based merely on Members requesting funding for those projects.

Mr. GLENN

Mr. GLENN. I thank the Chair. Mr. President, I gave a very lengthy statement yesterday on the space program, and the space station in particular, on items that got into considerable detail on the various aspects of the scientific reasoning for it, the corollary between some of the things that happened to astronauts in space and the normal processes of aging here on Earth, and how some of these things are being investigated, or planned to be investigated more in the future than they have been up to now. But I think these are very, very interesting. But for a few minutes, I will not use all of my 20 minutes on this, and I do not want to go back and address all of those things I did yesterday much as I would like to have that time. I know we are under some time constraints. But I want to make sure that we get into the Record, or that we put out for our colleagues' consideration, some items that express concerns about the cost growth and schedule slippage on the space station without getting into the scientific background of justification of why we are doing this thing at all because those were put out by my friend from Arkansas, Senator Bumpers, in a ``Dear Colleague'' letter. Let me just respond to his comments of a little while ago. I do not have a better friend in the Senate than Senator Bumpers. We came in here the same day. I would say that our voting records are nearly similar, except once a year we get into opposition on this particular item. I always regret that we have to oppose each other on this because we both feel strongly about this particular issue. So this is not a slam at Senator Bumpers. But I do want to respond to some of the things that were put out in his ``Dear Colleague'' letter. In that letter it stated, ``Scheduled delays in cost overruns will add additional billions to the price of the project.'' The bottom line is that as of now the station is over 45 percent complete. The hardware is being cut. This is not some prospective thing off into the future. The hardware is in existence; 45 percent; 122,000 pounds of the space station have already been built and are currently undergoing testing. According to GAO, the $17.4 billion project is about $89 million over cost and about $88 million behind schedule. I repeat. It is a $17.4 billion project, and only $89 million over cost. That is roughly within 1 percent of the planned targets. I think that is better than probably 99 percent of Government projects, or maybe even industrial projects also. I think very clearly NASA and its contractors need to strive to complete the project on time and on budget, of course. The facts indicate that the program is slightly--I say slightly--over budget; the figures I just gave--and behind schedule. However, NASA managers are taking steps to reverse that trend. A very important tool in NASA's case is its contract with the prime contractor, Boeing, which ties a very substantial portion of Boeing's payment to successful performance of the contract. Here is another very important management tool for dealing with cost growth. Administrator Goldin set up a program reserve, so included within these planned $17.4 billion program costs are program reserves. Nearly $3 billion of the station's budget fall into this category. These are funds which are to be used for unplanned or unforeseen costs. It is a research program. You cannot define it like buying 22 trucks off the line at GM or Ford or some place where you know the exact costs, and so on. So you do have to plan for unplanned or unforeseen costs. That is a likely occurrence when one is designing and building and testing and operating a very unique research facility, the only one of its kind. Up until recently, NASA had not had much need to tap into these program reserves. The program was going along well, being well managed, staying within budget. However, the last half of fiscal 1996, 1997, and 1998 are the peak construction and spending years. It is during this time that program managers anticipated they might need to use reserves. The bottom line is that there are adequate reserves to fund all anticipated cost growths that are foreseen right now. Also, my friend from Arkansas said in that ``Dear Colleague,'' ``NASA is considering making up the shortfall by diverting funds intended for developing scientific experiments on the station. If this happens, NASA could end up with a space station with no scientific capability at all.'' That is a very troubling assertion. But my colleagues know, I believe, that research to be performed on the station will significantly benefit those of us right here on Earth. The research is the reason we have the program. It is not just to let a few people go up and experience the view from up there in space. It is to do the basic, fundamental research in the new laboratory of space, a capability that humankind has never had before through our hundreds of thousands of years of existence here on Earth. For the first time, we can use this new laboratory of space. So I have asked NASA about this issue and NASA reports the following: Station managers have taken steps to ensure that the scientific payloads are being developed on a parallel course with the space station vehicle and are synchronized with their planned use aboard the space station. NASA has shifted some funds from the space station science accounts to the program reserve accounts where they may be needed for construction of the vehicle itself during the next year or so. Before these schedule changes were made, some of the scientific payloads were moving ahead of schedule and would have been completed before they would have been used on the station. The rephasing of some of these development activities also has the effect of freeing up funding planned for the next 2 years but that would simply augment the program reserves and place those reserves and figures at a more acceptable level as a percentage of the total budget for those 2 years. So in the end there is no reduction in the commitment to research on the space station. It is a matter of timing, not a reduction in scientific capability. The overall level of funds for science activity has not been reduced one penny. Also it has been said, an issue has been made of the problems that have been encountered by NASA and Boeing in building the space station's nodes, the connecting pieces for the space station modules. Earlier this year one of the nodes failed a pressure test. However, this problem has been corrected. Last week, just a week ago, the nodes passed the pressurization test. There have been some costs in schedule penalties when this problem has been addressed. However, the costs can be met through the use of the program reserves I mentioned a moment ago. Let me say this pressure test takes it up to about 1\1/2\ times what the normal pressure will be in that structure while it is in space. They have approximately a sea level pressure, slightly over sea level pressure, which is 14.7 pounds per square inch. I think it is planned that the station will operate at 15.2, and they went up to 1\1/2\ times that 15.2, and it passed with no problems. So NASA does not believe that any delays in launching any space station element will occur as a result of this now corrected problem. It was a problem at one time, but that has been overcome. Finally, the Senator from Arkansas has asserted that the Russians are falling behind on their share of the program and that the United States is bailing out the Russians by renting time on the Mir spacecraft. The Russians play a crucial role in the international space station, but their participation will result in the United States ultimately spending less on the program rather than more. The schedule problems encountered by the Russians have been the subject of high level government-to-government negotiations. In July of this year, 1996, Prime Minister Chernomyrdin and Vice President Gore signed a document detailing key milestones for both sides to meet in order to keep the program on schedule. This meeting resulted in needed funds being freed up within the Russian bureaucracy so that work on the Russian components could continue. That is just a month and a half ago, a little less than that. The Russian officials have assured NASA that their schedule slippages can be eliminated as long as necessary funding levels are maintained. In the meantime, the United States and Russia are continuing to cooperate on what I think is an exciting program, a productive joint program on the Mir space station. As many of us are certainly aware, U.S. astronaut Shannon Lucid is still up there right now completing a record-setting stay on the Mir space station. When she comes back down in another week or so, I believe she will have about 185 days in space. When she comes back down, she will be replaced by another U.S. astronaut, John Blaha, thus continuing what will eventually be 2\1/2\ years of continuous U.S. presence on the Russian station. This streak began with Norm Thagard's mission last year. The goals of this first phase of United States-Russian space cooperation are being met and include, No. 1, experience in long- duration space operation. As discussed above, U.S. astronauts are getting invaluable experience to better understand the requirements of sustained permanent space operations. This experience will enable NASA scientists and engineers to more productively plan for the research that will be conducted on the international space station. No. 2, science research. U.S. astronauts Norm Thagard and Shannon Lucid have conducted literally hundreds of experiments during their respective stays on Mir and hundreds more are being planned over the next 2 years. So, Mr. President, those are just a few comments in rebuttal to what was put out in the ``Dear Colleague'' letter that was sent around. I will reserve the remainder of my time here to reply to some of the other areas, so I will yield the floor at this time. I reserve the remainder of my time. How much time do I have remaining, please?

Mr. GLENN. I thank the Chair.

Mr. GLENN. Mr. President, I wish we had a lot more time because there are many things to be said. I used a lot of time yesterday and will not be able to repeat all that today. Let me talk for a moment about this protein crystal thing because I think there have been some misconceptions put forth on the floor here. This is not something we are just talking about that may be out there some time in the future. It is here now. Private industry is working with the NASA Center for Macromolecular Crystallography to produce high-quality protein crystals for new development. Let me tell you the companies that are involved with this: Schering-Plough, Eli-Lilly, Upjohn, Bristol-Myers, Squibb, Smith Kline Beecham, Biocryst, DuPont Merck, Eastman Kodak, and Vertex. This is not some time in the future they may do this. They are using them now to research cancer, diabetes, emphysema, and immune system disorders, and including the HIV virus. There has been such rapid advancements in these particular areas. And this protein structure that can be developed in space promises to revolutionize the pharmaceutical industry. You would not have all these companies directly involved with NASA if that was not true. Researchers seek to define the structure of proteins and design drugs that interact with them. Penicillin is a well known example of a drug that works by blocking a protein's function. Orbital experiments provide researchers with superior protein crystals for analysis and they also help scientists understand the fundamental concepts about the crystallization process. You cannot do that on Earth. The information could be used to improve crystallization techniques here on earth however. Rationally designed drugs promise to revolutionize health care. Orbital research will feed this revolution with the crucial protein structure data it needs. NASA researchers have already used--not in the future--but already have used space shuttle missions to produce protein crystals for a variety of clinical conditions, including cancer, diabetes, emphysema, and immune system disorders. What if we broke through with something on HIV or found out from something from these protein crystal studies that space-grown crystals were in such a way different that we came up with a new approach to HIV or something like that? We would think that was well worth anything that we were looking into on the whole space program. Mr. President, one other area--without getting into a lot more of those details--there is one other area I wanted to mention here today. You know, we have a lot of things that occur to astronauts when they are up there in space flight. After a few days their bodies start changing. They have a lot of physiologic changes. On the floor here yesterday I had the book that NASA has put out on space medicine, space physiology. If you look at that and then you look over into the Merck Manual on Geriatrics you find some very similar things, you find out that some of the things that occur to astronauts in space in a very short period of time also occur to the elderly in the normal processes of aging. I wish we could have those 44 million Americans today that are over 60, those 44 million Americans listening to this. I am sure we would have every single one of them supporting the space program when they realize that such things as bone density changes that affect the aging here on Earth also affect astronauts. Orthostatic intolerance, the difference in blood pressure when standing, sitting, and so on, decreases during flight and returns to normal, but it is a symptom associated with aging. Balance and vestibular problems, dizziness, the inability to maintain their balance upon returning from a flight, sleep disturbances, muscle strength, immunology. The body in space reduces its immunology. Why the immune system? Why, we do not really know. The elderly have the same thing happen. Normally, as people get older, their body's immune system goes down hill. If we could just make some experiments to find out why this occurs and trigger off the body's response, its own immune system against cancer and AIDS and all the other diseases and all the other infections we have here on Earth, that one area alone would be worth everything that we are spending in this area. Reduced absorption of medicine and nutrients in the stomach and gut evidenced during space flight and also suspected with many elderly. Perhaps some of the elderly do not get the nutrients, and their drugs are not as effective as they otherwise would be. Cardiac electrical activity changes, serum glucose tolerance changes, reflexes change, all these things that occur to astronauts in space and also occur to the elderly normally here on Earth. I know I am rapidly going through these things. I wish I had time to go into these things in more detail. But these are areas of research for the future that I think are extremely, extremely valuable. Mr. President, one thing we have not mentioned either is the international aspects of this. Isn't it nice that we are cooperating in space rather than fighting each other here on Earth? I think that is an important item. And 13 nations, the United States, Canada, Italy, Belgium, The Netherlands, Denmark, Norway, France, Spain, Germany, the United Kingdom, Japan, and Russia are joining together in the largest scientific cooperative program ever, the biggest single scientific cooperative program ever in the history of this country. We are drawing on the history of the world. We are drawing on Russian expertise and long duration space flight and existing Russian technology and equipment. And the international space station will help redirect the focus of Russian technology programs to nonmilitary pursuits. This service is a symbol of the opportunities available through a peaceful international initiative. We will have several laboratories aboard the space station: the United States lab, one other United States facility, the European space agency Columbus Orbital Facility, a Japanese experiment module, and three Russian research modules. Partner nations will contribute $9 billion to the U.S. cooperative effort. And international contributions mean international cooperation bringing together the best scientific minds worldwide to answer fundamental scientific questions in this new laboratory of space. Mr. President, I have used on the floor before the statement by Daniel Webster when they were contemplating in the Senate of the United States whether to provide money to buy land beyond the Mississippi. And he said as follows: What do we want with this vast worthless area, this region of savages and wild beasts, of deserts of shifting sands and whirlwinds of dust and cactus and prairie dogs? To what use could we ever hope to put these great deserts or those endless mountain ranges, impenetrable and covered to their very base with eternal snow? What can we ever hope to do with the western coast, a coast of 3,000 miles, rock-bound, cheerless, uninviting, and not a harbor on it? What use have we for this country? Mr. President, I will never vote 1 cent from the Public Treasury to place the Pacific coast 1 inch nearer to Boston than it is now. Mr. President, I use that statement again to show how myopic Daniel Webster's vision was, learned though he might have been. Certainly, that Western half of the United States, which we were better able to explore than we are going into space, took more than any 25 or 30 years to develop to where it was useful and bring back all the benefit of all of the money we had spent on it. People have stood here on Earth and looked up for a hundred years, or several hundred thousand years. We have wanted to travel up there. We wanted to go see what it was like. Now we can use that area of space. One other area. It is not only international cooperation but it is inspiration for our own youth in this country. I think that is an important byproduct, or important add-on to the space program that we sometimes ignore. It is exciting for our young people to know that we are leading the world in science, technology, and research. It is exciting enough that a lot more are going into science and math because of this. How do we measure those benefits? I don't know. In the future, if we can inspire our young people through the space program and the continuing space station, I think that pays off in benefits for the future beyond anything we can see at the outset. Just like the history of this country has shown, that money spent on basic research, even though we can't quite see the benefits at the outset--if there is one thing we have learned, money spent on basic research seems to have a way of paying off in the future beyond anything we see at the outset. This is one of the biggest research programs that the whole world has ever undertaken, and I think it has the biggest potential payoff. I ask unanimous consent to have some additional information printed in the Record at this time.

Mr. GLENN. Mr. President, I wish we had several more hours to discuss this. I hope my colleagues will take time to look at the more complete statement I had in the Record yesterday because it went into a lot of these areas in greater detail. How much time do I have remaining?

Mr. GLENN. Thank you. I yield the floor.

Mr. GLENN

Mr. GLENN. I thank my friend from Missouri and my friend from Maryland for their courtesy, and I would strongly encourage them to adopt language in the statement of the conference managers which would implement the work force restructuring plan we have discussed today.

Mr. GLENN. I would like to discuss an important issue with the distinguished Chairman and ranking member of the subcommittee regarding NASA's civil servant work force and their collective future. Last month the General Accounting Office [GAO] provided me with an assessment of NASA's efforts and plans to decrease its staffing levels. As ranking member of the Governmental Affairs Committee with jurisdiction over the Federal civil service laws, I was keenly interested in learning how NASA was meeting its aggressive work force restructuring goals. As my friends know, in the early 1990's, NASA was projecting its civil service work force to be about 25,500; however, budget levels have drastically changed that projection. Currently NASA's work force stands at about 21,500, and plans to reduce it to 17,500 by fiscal year 2000. The GAO report, entitled ``NASA Personnel: Challenges to Achieving Workforce Reductions,'' discusses various steps NASA has taken to reduce its work force to current levels. The GAO report suggests that NASA should provide to Congress a work force restructuring plan which lays out in detail how NASA intends to meet its work force goals. I would note that I have heard from employees at NASA's Lewis Research Center outside the Cleveland who are very concerned about their future, and the future of NASA-Lewis. I will continue to do everything I can to make sure that Lewis remains a top flight research facility.

Mr. GLENN. I strongly support that such a plan be submitted to the Congress. Further, I believe that for NASA headquarters and each field center, the plan should clearly establish the annual FTE targets by job description. The plan should also discuss what process and any assistance that will be provided to those employees whose jobs will be eliminated or transferred. To the extent possible the plan should be developed so as to minimize social and economic impact. I would note that the Department of Energy has a legislative mandate to prepare a work force restructuring plan prior to any significant change in the work force at any of DOE's facilities. I was a primary author of this legislative provision--Public Law 102-484, section 3161. I believe that NASA should take a careful look at how DOE has developed their work force restructuring plans as it prepares the plan which we are requesting.

Mr. GLENN

Mr. GLENN. Mr. President, I rise in opposition to the amendment offered by my friends from New Hampshire and Wisconsin, and I want to speak in support of the Bion mission. We are singling out a particular area of animal research because it happens to be on a space flight, I guess, because it happens to be up there a little bit above the atmosphere, going around, where we have a unique opportunity to do some of this research in the microgravity environment of near-Earth space. We are not talking about doing away with all animal research, as I understand it. Yet, we have hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of thousands of animal research projects with animals involved in medical research right here on Earth. My distinguished colleague from New Hampshire said a while ago, why do we need these monkeys up there because we have some 38 years of human experience in space? We do have that kind of experience. But I also submit we have hundreds of thousands of years of human experience right here on Earth and we still find the need to do medical research here on Earth and use animals to do that medical research. So, if we are just against medical research using animals, that is one thing. But to say that because we happen to be up here a little distance off the Earth's surface, we are now going to prohibit it up there, or to say the money spent, the comparatively small amount of money being spent on this is going to be cut out, I just think flies in the face of what our experience has been with animal research. What am I talking about? Here on Earth we now have open heart operations. I am a frustrated doctor at heart. I started out wanting to be a doctor years ago. I got sidetracked by World War II. But when I was in Houston with the astronaut program down there, Mike DeBakey was a good friend of ours. I used to go in and watch him operate. Do you know what all those operations were prefaced on? They prefaced them on animal experiments. The heart operation, the valve replacements and the operations of heart replacement, all were done with animal experiments ahead of time. We could go on and on. For all the drug tests that we have in this country--I do not mean drug tests to see if people are using drugs, I mean drugs that are antibiotics and so on that we use--we preface our human use by making experiments on animals. I am sure the whole medical community would be up in arms if we tried to knock all of that out. We try out vaccines on animals. We try out bone research on things that will make bones knit together better. We do that in animal research. We do that in eye research, we did corneal transplants on animals--I believe it was rabbits, as I recall --before we did it on human beings. We did that because it is safer for people to have that kind of experiment. We were concerned these experiments be done humanely, so we passed the Animal Welfare Act. It is the law that sets the standards of how we permit animal research to be done in this country, so it is done humanely. Those rules are basically the rules that we follow and also, as I understand it, the Russians follow, or are following now. I am the first to say some of the things we heard early on about the Bion project, I questioned about whether it was being done properly or not. But those things are corrected if they ever were true. They are being corrected and they are being monitored very, very closely. The point is, these Bion flights represent an effective approach to conducting very important biomedical research. To knock this out just because the laboratory happens to be up here weightless, going around in microgravity up a little bit off the Earth's surface here, to knock it out because it is part of the space program and ignore all of the other hundreds of thousands of animal research projects going on, I do not think makes much sense. Bion research is fundamental, peer-reviewed research at the center of NASA's program for exploring how the body changes in microgravity, and there are a lot of changes. NASA and Russia have cooperated on Bion missions for 20 years now. This is not something just starting up. We have been at this for a long time. The fact is, we have used the Bion spacecraft to produce major findings on space flight and health. Mr. President, the amendment's proponents argue that the Bion missions are not necessary because we have already sent people in orbit and, therefore, we can study the effects of microgravity directly on people who have already flown. Obviously, we know people have survived space flight, but this does not mean we know what happens in our bodies. We are still trying to find out what the basic changes in the body are that occur in microgravity that give us some of the results that we get. Just as researchers on the ground sometimes need to use animal models by the hundreds of thousands all over the country, researchers in space must use animals as well. The plain fact is that for some types of research, animals are better subjects than people. For one thing, human astronauts are not genetically uniform. Compared to lab animals, there is a lot more natural variability in the human population from both environmental and genetic factors. With the small sample sizes and brief time periods inherent in most space flight opportunities, more reliable baselines for certain measurements can be obtained using lab animals. Another benefit is that a lab animal's diet can be more easily controlled than an astronaut's. Astronauts up there for 14 days, 17 days, as the STS-78 mission, get a little cranky when you tell them they have to eat the same pellets for 14 days, or whatever it is you want the animals to eat to control its diet and dietary intake. Given the fact lab animals fulfill a vital role in microgravity research, it is imperative that these animals be treated in a humane way, and I agree with that 100 percent. All people involved with the Bion Program should be held accountable for the animals' welfare, and they are. The animals' care and well-being is maintained before and during flight. Following the flight, the animals are returned to the Russian breeding colony, or another suitable habitat, where they are maintained humanely for the remainder of their natural lives. This program has been reviewed--I point this out very specifically--this program has been reviewed by independent experts who have concluded that it is legitimate science performed in a humane manner. Several months back, Dr. Jane Goodall, who is famous for her primate experiences in Africa along Lake Tanganyika in Africa--she is known all over the world, and I have known her a number of years--contacted me about her concerns in this regard, about the Bion Program specifically. I relayed these concerns both by telephone and letter to NASA Administrator Dan Goldin, who established an independent task force to review the Bion project. I want to quote from a letter the task force wrote to the chairman of the NASA advisory council dated July 2, 1996. I think the letter was entered into the Record a little while ago by Senator Bond. The task force unanimously recommended the Bion project proceed with the following findings: (1) The quality of science proposed . . . is excellent. It has been reviewed by peers in a very thorough and repeated manner and has withstood analysis for nearly a decade. (2) There are no known alternative means to achieve the objectives of the proposal. (3) The animal care and welfare proposals meet all requirements and-- Listen to this-- and U.S. legal standards. In other words, the Bion project is being conducted under our Animal Welfare Act, under the same guidelines we have for our own research laboratories in this country. In addition, the task force recommended NASA devise and implement a bioethics review concerning their policies for animal experimentation and that this review include participation by a professional bioethicist. Not only did Mr. Goldin accept this recommendation, but such a task force review is getting underway with not one but four bioethicists, in addition to other veterinarians and researchers. Mr. President, NASA has made the space environment seem almost commonplace. It has been an amazingly successful program. We see videos of astronauts floating in the space shuttle, and it looks like a lot of fun, and it is. But along with that goes an awful lot of research. It is a tremendous amount of research. That is the only reason we have the program, is to do basic research, not to see whether we can go up there and get back now, but to do basic research in orbit. It is easy to forget just what a foreign and challenging environment space is. Zero gravity is unique, not just in the history of human experience, but in the history of life itself. Few of us have been able to experience weightlessness, and we are the first people to have done that in the some 4.5-billion-year history of life on Earth. Nothing in our evolutionary history prepares us for being weightless. But here is what we find after people are up there weightless for a period of time: The bones begin to lose some of their mass. Calcium content comes out of the bones; Muscles atrophy, they get less capable; The body's system for maintaining balance begins to change; Coordination is reduced; The immune system becomes less effective; Sleep patterns and the body's natural clock are affected. And that is just for starters. Some of my colleagues may find this list has a very, very familiar ring to it, and I talked about this in more detail on the floor yesterday. I know it has a familiar ring to me. It is not because I have been in orbit, but because reduced muscle mass, bones becoming more fragile, deteriorated balance and coordination, reduced immune efficiency and sleep disturbances are changes that occur with the normal aging process here on Earth, as well as what happens on a space flight. What are the mechanisms for these changes? Are the same mechanisms in play among the aging on Earth and the astronauts in orbit? Would an older astronaut experience slower or faster deconditioning on orbit? Are these changes reversible in space by some artificial means or here on Earth for those of our elderly citizens, some 44 million, almost, above the age of 60, as I pointed out yesterday? If so, then how do we make these changes reversible for benefit right here on Earth? We do not know the answers to these questions, and that is the challenge. But, Mr. President, that is also the opportunity and that is why the Bion missions are so important, because when we identify the underlying mechanisms by which the body adapts to space, we may also identify much, much more. What if this research leads to new insights on how to treat osteoporosis? Not only would that make the lives of thousands of elderly people more enjoyable, it would save countless millions of dollars in health care costs. A better understanding of balance and vestibular changes in the elderly could help prevent falls and avoid debilitating injuries for elderly people. That is another area. The immune system changes. Think what happens if we can just figure out what the common ground is between what happens to people in space over a lengthy period of time as the immune system goes downhill, becomes less effective and in the elderly here on Earth whose immune systems normally with old age become less effective. If we could find out by comparing back and forth what causes that kind of a mechanism, can we trigger it off artificially, is this a new approach to AIDS, is it something we can learn here that is a new approach to cancer? We do not know, but that is the purpose of research, to find out exactly some of those answers that are of benefit not only in space but will have direct application to people's lives right here on Earth. I am not trying to say that the Bion missions are the key to the fountain of youth. Far from it. But it is basic research on processes analogous to aging that can only be performed on orbit, and we don't know where it will lead. But if there is one thing we know from our whole U.S. experience in supporting basic research throughout our history, it is that money spent in this area normally has a way of paying off beyond anything we normally see at the outset. I think we owe it to our children and to our grandchildren to find the answers as best we can to some of these things and the opportunity we have to do that. Mr. President, my colleagues have heard me speak in detail about the value of basic research and how we do not always know what benefits will come from such research. But let me just talk very briefly about some of the benefits and technology spinoffs that have come out of the Bion Program to date. Doctors at the University of California at San Francisco are using the biosensors and telemetry technology developed for the Bion Program to monitor the condition of fetuses with life threatening conditions. For some congenital medical conditions, doctors can more safely and effectively operate on fetuses in the womb. Such surgery was much riskier before this sensor technology was available. A computerized video system developed to test the behavioral performance of Bion monkeys is now being used to teach learning disabled children. A device to noninvasively test bone strength was proven effective in Bion monkeys and is now commercially available to assess the condition of human patients suffering osteoporosis and other bone diseases. While conducting ground-based research in preparation for a Bion mission, Dr. Danny Riley of the Medical College of Wisconsin discovered a staining technique that surgeons can use to more accurately reconnect the peripheral nerves in severed limbs. And this discovery did not involve any amputation of animals' limbs to do that research. In the past, the only markers surgeons have had for accurately rejoining the peripheral nerves have been the positions and size of the nerve axons. Dr. Riley discovered a staining technique that stains sensory axons but not motor axons. Not only is this a boost for neurological research, but it will improve the successful prospects for reattaching limbs that have been severed. Mr. President, to conclude--I gave a more lengthy statement yesterday in detail of some of these areas--but to conclude, Bion research is important. It is thoroughly reviewed research. It is conducted humanely. It presents a real opportunity for new insights into the human body every bit as much as medical research right here on the surface of the Earth. We have a new environment up here. It is the microgravity of space flight. It offers a whole new opportunity to do animal research ahead of the human beings perhaps doing the same thing later on. As I said, initially we do those same things right here on Earth with regard to all sorts of experiments that have led to heart operations, drug tests, new vaccines, bone research, eye research, and so on, that we do here on Earth. And I see no reason whatsoever why we should knock this out when it is a very, very valuable program. So, Mr. President, I hope that we will defeat this amendment and I hope our colleagues will see the wisdom of going in that direction also. I yield the floor.

Mr. GLENN

Mr. GLENN. I thank the Chair. Mr. President, I want to make a statement on NASA today before we get in the throes of some of the amendments and get into the more time- constrained portion of our debate on the floor. I wish I could have the very personal attention of every person in this country who is 60 years of age or older. Do you know how many there are? According to the statistics from the Bureau of the Census, as of July 1 of this year, it is estimated we had 43,872,000 people above the age of 60. That number is expanding, as was pointed out in a U.S. News & World Report full-page article earlier this year in June called, ``Waves of Gray.'' The Census Bureau also tells us that over the next 50 years or so when those people who are in their twenties now are in their real senior years, the numbers of people over 60 years of age will have grown to almost 100 million people. Now, why do I bring that up in the context of NASA? Because I think if I had the attention of every single one of those people we could make very decided moves into getting every single one of those people to support everything about the space program, and for this reason. One thing that has happened in the look into the life and biosciences in the NASA program has been that we find some notable parallels between what happens to astronauts in space and what happens to the elderly right here on Earth. And if we can find what triggers some of these similarities, perhaps we will have a whole new handle on approaching difficulties that people have right here on Earth. There is an excellent article that was put out by Joan Vernikos, who is the Director of Life Sciences at NASA, and I wanted to read most of this article here because I think it is very good and it lays out exactly what NASA has found. Then I will have some addi- tional remarks at the end. The article is titled ``Parallel Processes? The Study of Human Adaptation to Space Helps Us Understand Aging.'' In 1963, the U.S. population included 17 million people who were 65 years old or older--today there are twice as many. That is just since 1963. Meanwhile, the number of Americans 85 years or older is projected to grow from 3.3 million today to 18.9 million by 2050. Many people just getting out of college and starting their working years will fit into that group. Gerontologists--scientists who study the aging process--say that more research into diseases that afflict older people could help to reduce the number of individuals who require expensive full-time medical care in their later years. Studies of age-related health problems have shown that the process of physiological adaptation to the low gravity of space induces symptoms also seen in aging (some effect of aging appear to be due to inactivity rather than the aging process itself). Hence, gerontologists and space life scientists are collaborating to determine how people adapt to aging and to the virtual absence of gravity in space and to develop countermeasures where possible. Space biomedical research could improve understanding of the basic mechanisms of aging, and aging research could contribute to a better understanding of physiological deconditioning in space. Astronauts: Simulating the Aging Process? Life on Earth evolved in the presence of gravity. For this reason, gravity plays a role in all life processes, and exposure to the microgravity environment of space affects living things significantly. Certain physiological changes that occur in space also occur with aging: for instance, cardiovascular deconditioning, balance disorders, weakening bones and muscles, disturbed sleep, and depressed immune response. An important difference, however, is that these changes are reversible in astronauts. Research has shown that insufficient excercise--due to aging, paralysis, weakness, or prolonged bed rest, for example--can cause a downward spiral in an individual's health over time, increasing susceptibility to bone fractures and slowing recovery from injuries and other ailments. What researchers learn about the physiological effects that accompany space flight may yield ways of limiting he deconditioning symptoms of the inactivity that comes with aging. Are these changes inevitable? Do they result from the same processes? Can people take steps to lessen, prevent, or reverse them? With the understanding that similar results may be due to different mechanisms and processes, biomedical researchers are attempting to gain insights into the aging process by studying physiological adaptation to space and visa versa. A primary goal of NASA's life sciences program is to understand the mechanisms underlying these physiological changes and to find ways of preventing them in astronauts. The National Institute on Aging's high-priority research interests reflect a similar focus, encompassing nervous system function, frailty, osteoporosis, dizzy spells, sudden drops in blood pressure often causing falls and fractured bones, problems with coordination of movements, and the effects of physical exercise on bone and muscle in the older population. Balance Disorders Space crew members experience neurosensory disturbances such as dizziness and inability to maintain their balance upon returning from space flights. Humans sense gravity on Earth directly through receptors in the inner ear and indirectly by touch and stretch. In space these sensing mechanisms don't review their usual cues. Studies of the neurosensory system conducted in space offer a unique opportunity to understand how gravity, and the absence of it, affects the central nervous system and neurosensory-dependent functions such as hand-eye coordination, posture, balance, and gait. Much space flight sciences research focuses on better understanding the mechanisms involved in the brain's interpretation of the body's orientation in three-dimensional space. With sufficient information in hand, researchers can develop procedures to protect space crew members from such disturbances, especially when crews return to Earth after long space voyages. The results of this research apply to patients with gait and postural disorders of neurological origin, including elderly people for whom falls may have especially serious consequences. Sleep Disturbances The change in sleep pattern that typically comes with aging is early waking and fragmented sleep. In space, sleep is also fragmented or otherwise disturbed. Optimal alertness during the day and sound sleep at night, valuable qualities on Earth and in space, require proper synchronizing of the human circadian pacemaker (the ``body clock''). Thus, researchers seek to better understand how aging and space flight affect the mechanisms governing circadian rhythms. While researchers surmise that aging changes the properties of the human circadian pacemaker, they are not precisely sure how changes occur. Research has shown that bright light can reset the human circadian pacemaker; this treatment, originally developed for aging people, more recently has proven useful to astronauts preparing for space flight. bone deterioration Loss of bone mass is a problem common to aging and space travel. Although the results may be the same, the causes may be different. Space life scientists and researchers studying aging are interested in how exercise affects bones; whether hormones or drugs can prevent bone loss or promote bone formation; and what mechanism translates mechanical loading (physical street or force) on bones into biochemical signals that stimulate bone formation and resorption. Normally, the breakdown of old bone mass (resorption) and the formation of new bone mass occur constantly, in a balanced cycle called remodeling. Mechanical forces (that is, gravity-driven stresses) appear to coordinate these fundamental bone shaping processes. Determining how the body translates these forces into the signals that control bone structure may reveal whether and how exercise or drugs can prevent osteoporosis in the elderly and in astronauts. cardiovascular deconditioning and orthostatic intolerance Exposure to microgravity degrades the general condition of the cardiovascular system and specifically degrades orthostatic tolerance (the ability of the cardiovascular system to supply the brain with enough blood to maintain consciousness while an individual stands upright). It is what adjusts our body if we are lying down and stand up or are sitting down and stand up suddenly. We know a lot of people have a problem with this, have a dizziness. If they fall over, with maybe osteoporosis, have a broken hip, whatever. Since orthostatic tolerance may decline with aging, whatever space researchers learn about this particular adaptation should help to solve the problem on Earth as well as in space, even though the mechanisms of adaptation may be different. drug and nutrient absorption Nausea and sometimes vomiting were the earliest and mostly consistent symptoms experienced in the first few days of spaceflight. A broad array of drugs used to treat motion sickness on Earth were only slightly helpful in space. Many theories were developed to explain this lack of effectiveness, until an astronaut doctor gave a fellow suffering astronaut one of these drugs by injection. The effect was miraculous. It became clear that the same drug taken orally in space was not nearly as effective because perhaps it was not absorbed nearly as well. Recent experiments in spaceflight suggest the absorption of calcium may also be reduced in space. Perhaps the same is true for other nutrients? Ground studies, using the inactivity of bed rest to mimic the effects of spaceflight in young volunteers, have also indicated reduced absorption through the stomach and gut, similar to what is suspected to be found in the elderly. Research in the absorption and distribution of drugs and nutrients in astronauts may help increase awareness that as people get older daily nutritional requirements as well as the effect of drugs prescribed may change. immune response Both aging and space flight depress the human immune response (though the change in space is temporary while the change due to aging is not). Reduced proliferation of infection-fighting cells in the immune system may underlie changes in both conditions. It is not clear, however, whether aging or other factors that typically accompany aging (such as declining activity) cause this immune-system depression. Models of age-related changes in immune function are difficult to find, so microgravity may be a very useful model system to use to increase our understanding of changes due to aging. for the future Although humans have been traveling into space for three decades-- A little over three decades now. researchers have had few opportunities thus far to carry out systematic biomedical research in space. The dedicated space biomedical research missions of Skylab in the early 1970's and two Spacelab Life Sciences missions aboard the Space Shuttle stand out as exceptions. Future Spacelab missions such as Neurolab, a joint mission with the National Institute of Health to be launched in 1998--and expanding collaboration with Russia on Shuttle-Mir missions will give researchers greater opportunities to solve the mysteries of space deconditioning and aging. Mr. President, NASA has a book published by some of its most notable physicians. The book is called ``Space Physiology and Medicine.'' And it is a great book. It describes the changes that have come up in space flight with the different astronauts. And they have come up with a list of 55--55 different areas where there are changes on the human body that occur in space. It is a long list. It is in that book. I did a little research on my own. We came up with some very similar findings, as a matter of fact. I had the Merck Manual of Geriatrics. Everyone is familiar with the Merck Manual that almost every doctor has on his or her desk as a reference work. It is the definitive reference work. It has been published, I think, for over 100 years now, the Merck Manual. Just a few years ago, back in the 1980's, Merck started putting out the Merck Manual of Geriatrics. It is one where it gives all the same things that apply to the regular Merck Manual for normal-aged people. But this one book has a different emphasis to it. In the index they have, for instance, ``disequilibrium of aging,'' one I just happen to turn to here. The book gives a great number of things where changes in the human body occur with aging. And they note them here and the effects of them. What we did is go through the NASA book on space physiology and medicine and compare it with the Merck Manual where there is a special relationship to aging and the human body. We came up with some similarities that are excellent. I mentioned some of them a moment ago. But there are 10 very basic areas we think should be looked into and can be looked into that can give us not only better control for the deterioration that occurs in the human body in space, but perhaps even more importantly for those almost 44 million people I mentioned who are over 60 years of age, these things, if we do more research on them, can apply to a better senior citizen life expectancy here on Earth. And that to me is exciting. That is something to really look into and find out. I am of an age where I could probably benefit from some of that, and so are some 44 million other Americans. And that list is growing all the time. As I said, over the next 50 years or so that number is expected to double up to almost 100 million people. Listen to these for just a moment. These are physiological changes that are referred not only in the Merck Manual, but also in the experience of astronauts in space as recorded in the space physiology book. First, bone density. What happens? Net loss of bone density in both the normal age process where it is irreversible as far as we know now, and during space flight where when they come back to Earth it is reversible. What causes this? What is the mechanism that triggers changes in bone density? What can lead us to breakthroughs in the treatment of osteoporosis? Are there some similarities here where we can make some experiments on the elderly and on astronauts in space? If we had an older person go up in space, would that breakdown in the bone be in addition to what has already occurred just because that person had become elderly? We do not know the answer to that yet. But I think we should be finding out. Second area, orthostatic tolerance, the difference in blood pressure measured when standing or sitting. How the lower extremities and the abdominal area react to the changing role of gravity as you stand up. Orthostatic tolerance decreases during and after flight in space before returning to normal. It takes several days before astronauts, when they come back from space, feel normal again. But it is a symptom that, once it occurs in the elderly, they may have to live with it the rest of their lives. So research into neurosensory mechanisms that control this adaptation could lead to cures for motion sickness and help prevent falls, a very major factor with the elderly. Another area, balance and vestibular problems. Dizziness and the inability to maintain balance is common in the elderly and astronauts returning from space flight. Research could lead to advances in treatment of patients with walking disorders or posture disorders of a neurological origin. Sleep disturbances. Fragmented sleep and early wakening are common problems in space flight and aging. That is, disruption of the human circadian rhythm I mentioned a few moments ago. Learning how to control the circadian rhythm will improve quality of life for the elderly as well as others with sleep disorders or schedule changes. Muscle strength. Decreases during and after space flight before returning to normal, and decreases with aging, just across the board in general. What causes this? Understanding the mechanism for muscle weakening and developing treatments can benefit patients with prolonged bed rest, as an example. Immunology. I find this absolutely fascinating, and the portent of this or the possibility of what research in this area may bring--I do not think we can predict what it might be. The normal aging process in space flight depresses the human immune response. Now, what triggers this? Why is that triggered in someone in the weightlessness of space flight for a few days? What causes it in the elderly here on Earth where they become less immune to certain diseases? Since these immune system changes are similar, I think it is just an ideal opportunity that exists to better understand how the elderly fight infection, cancer, AIDS in younger people, across the board. We are talking about one of the most basic things in the human body, that the immune system changes its response. The immune system changes its response in the elderly but is triggered off in younger, healthy people that go into space. Now, say we send someone into space. In an elderly person would that change in immunology be in addition to what they have already experienced just by growing older here on Earth, or would they be immune from further changes induced by microgravity? We do not know the answer yet. Maybe we will someday. To me, that is one of the most exciting areas of all because it opens up the thought of so many other areas and the potential is enormous. What if all of our elderly people here on Earth could do something that would let them continue their immune response that they had in their younger years? What if they can find a way to stimulate the immunology of young people who may be at risk for AIDS or cancer or whatever? This to me is a very, very exciting area to look into. Drug and nutrient absorption. Reduced absorption of medicine and nutrients in the stomach and gut evidenced during space flight and also suspected with many elderly where medicines do not have the same effect they are expected to have. Space flight research may increase awareness of changing nutrient and pharmaceutical needs of the elderly. Cardiac electrical activity increases PR interval and QT interval in space flight and aging. What effect this may have or the impact it may have is not clear, but it certainly is an area for further research. Serum glucose postflight increases and it increases with aging. The implication of this, once again, is not clear. Reflexes, particularly Achilles tendon reflex. Reflex duration is decreased after flight for astronauts coming back. We do not know why. For a while, until they readapt to their Earth environment, their reflexes change. Now, that also occurs with the elderly. It may be diminished or even absent as a reflex in the elderly. All of these things are areas where we have seen changes in the elderly as well as with those who are on space flight. Mr. President, I think these areas are exciting areas to look into. In a life science project that NASA has and is planning they are looking into these areas. I know that the Administrator, Dan Goldin at NASA, is interested in this area. I have talked to him about some of the similarities in these areas and he is very interested in seeing that these things are looked into. Exactly how that will be done is under some discussion right now. These are areas that obviously have enormous potential benefits for people right here on Earth. Mr. President, let me go into some of the other areas of NASA that I want to talk about for a little while this afternoon. Curiosity is at the heart of all research. Who are we going to see as being responsible for establishing a curious attitude, the curious mind of those, say, in the class of 2015 or 2025? The Government's responsibility, as I see it, is to fund long-term basic research that is not being done or cannot be done by anyone in private corporations here on Earth and be conducted on the space station. Certainly no company is going to invest significantly in that particular area. The CRS report discussing case studies of federally sponsored research is interesting. Mr. President, the Congressional Research Service has recently published a report which examines some case studies of federally-sponsored research and development activities. While these are not directly related with the space station, I want to cite some of these as examples where curiosity or some inquiry into the unknown--that has been an American trade ever since our founding days--has led on to things that were undreamed of when they started out. Some of the examples discussed in the report indicate that we do not always know what the outcome or benefit will be from research, but these examples clearly demonstrate federally-sponsored research in these areas can change the way we live. I want to make clear, as CRS stresses, it is often difficult to extrapolate findings from particular cases to support for other types of research. The point I wish to make is that basic research can have unforeseen and unintended benefits. Here are some of the examples cited by CRS: Titanium, in common use today, until the 1940's the titanium industry did not exist because nobody knew how to convert titanium ore into metal of a high-quality product. Intense Government involvement surmounted this technological barrier and allowed the industry to grow. Like so many research programs, early applications of titanium were for military use. However, commercial use of titanium now is three times that of the military. The Internet: As most people now know, the predecessor to the Internet was created in the late 1960's to establish a secure and reliable communications network between the DOD and universal researchers. Out of this early narrow application has evolved today an entirely new media form which will possibly impact our lives as much as the development of the telephone or television. The National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics and the $25 cowling: NACA, NASA's predecessor, was involved with the federally-sponsored research effort to improve America's international standing in aviation and aeronautics back in that time. One of the first major successes in the 1920's was development of a cowling around aircraft engines, the housing which surrounds it. In 1928, NACA announced test results that showed if a $25 cowling was installed on existing aircraft, then the possible annual savings in fuel and associated costs could amount to more than $5 million. In addition, one of the first aircraft equipped with an NACA-designed cowling set a new cross-country record, allowing the maximum speed of the aircraft to be increased by more than 10 percent. Food processing control is another example. In the early days of the space program, NASA wrestled with the question of how and what to feed astronauts. They were aided in this effort by researchers from Pillsbury, working on a Government contract. A major issue that had to be overcome was to develop assurances against bacteria contamination. Pillsbury responded to this problem by developing the hazard analysis and critical control point, HACCP, concept, which was designed to prevent food safety problems rather than catch them after they had occurred. Pillsbury used the HACCP process to manufacture food that went to the moon with the Apollo spacecraft. Subsequently, this system was incorporated in the Food and Drug Administration regulation on canned foods and has since become industry practice and provides for safety for food that our producers here can now ship all over the world. Compact disc technology. Compact discs have made a substantial impact throughout our economy--in education, music, and computer systems. Not many people know this technology was originally developed from R&D sponsored by the Air Force, who were looking for better data storage systems for the strategic bomber force. Air Force research in this area successfully demonstrated the concept in the early seventies, but it was not until the mid 1980's that CD's became the commercial success that they are today. Of course, with any research, there is no guarantee of the greatness of discovery. Arthur Compton, a Nobel Prize physicist, noted: Every great discovery I ever made, I gambled that the truth was there and then I acted on it in faith until I could prove its existence. From Eli Whitney to Thomas Edison, great Americans have pursued research leading to vast improvements in the quality of the American way of life. I am convinced that research conducted on the international space station will impact our lives in a manner comparable to the other research programs I have mentioned. Today I want to discuss for a little while the type of research that will be conducted on the international space station and discuss the research currently being done on the space shuttle. As I talk about this research, I want to emphasize what the benefits of the research have been, or could be, for those of us right here on Earth. Then I would like to discuss a particularly promising area of research, and that was the one I mentioned before that involves the very similarities of aging and space flight. Space station research areas. The following is a list of some of the fields to be explored aboard the space station: Biotechnology, which is very promising. While some significant advances have been made in microgravity research aboard the space shuttle, many projects need a sustained microgravity environment in order to obtain any useful result. For example--and this is a very promising--protein crystal growth projects, conducted in microgravity, have resulted in new cancer drugs, among other pharmaceutical breakthroughs. However, the longest shuttle mission has only been 17 days. Often, this is not long enough to grow adequate crystals for drug research and production. A sustained microgravity environment provided by the space station could lead to new weapons in the fight against such things as cancer, AIDS, and other terminal illnesses. I find that very exciting. In talking to some of the people at NASA who are dealing with these areas, they say that some day a Nobel Prize will be given for some of the breakthroughs that are imminent. I think that is entirely possible. Private industry is working with NASA's Center for Macromolecular Crystallography to produce high-quality protein crystals for new drug development. Drug companies such as Scherring Plough, Eli-Lilly, Upjohn, Bristol-Myers, Squibb, Smith Kline Beecham, Biocryst, Dupont Merck, Eastman Kodak, and Vertex are using protein crystals to research cancer, diabetes, emphysema, and immune system disorders, including the HIV virus. That is exciting to me because you cannot develop crystals of this purity or size here on Earth because of the ``G'' environment. In space, they grow differently, larger, and you can separate them out, and they grow more pure than on Earth. It opens up new fields of application for pharmaceutical breakthroughs. You can only do that in a lengthy period of time on the space station. To me, the potential in that area alone is worth everything that we are thinking about spending on the space station. Another area is mammalian tissue culture. Consider that field. The purpose of tissue culturing is to replicate what goes on inside the body, but in a controlled environment. Unfortunately, several factors conspire to limit the size and the shape of tissue cultures in a normal Earth-bound lab. For example, tissue cultures are extremely sensitive to shear forces caused by fluid flow. Microgravity provides a reduced stress environment, which allows much larger tissue masses to develop. Tissues grown in a microgravity environment not only grow large, but they resemble what actually happens in the body. They would no longer settle at the bottom of a Petri dish in a lab. You would develop that tissue culture much as it would occur here on Earth in a human body where it is in a 3D environment. Clearly, the more accurate and living model we have, the more accurate the results of any experiment that is done with the model. This branch of research is particularly promising for cancer research. That is actively underway, and it has been on the space shuttle and will be to a greater degree on the space station. Materials science. The space station will play an integral role in this research area. The zero-gravity environment available in the space station will allow scientists to study how gravity influences the crystal growth process I mentioned, and the primary offshoot of crystalline growth can also be polymer production. Polymers are long chains of organic molecules used in everything from nylon and polyester to the plastics found in cars and medical implants. With breakthroughs in this area, the impact could be enormous. Life sciences. Variable gravitational fields are an excellent research tool in addressing fundamental biological questions. Cell response to external forces results in changes in gene expression and protein synthesis. By studying cells in microgravity, researchers hope to better understand how such basic cell functions are carried out. This is the first step in learning how to improve care for genetic disorders and other cell imbalance problems. Space physiology. Microgravity research also helps improve our understanding of bodily systems. From the basic functions of the heart and lungs to the complex neurosystems controlling balance, perception and cognition, information gathered from space station research will improve health care on Earth. For example, astronauts lose bone and muscle mass in microgravity. In learning to treat these flight problems, scientists have uncovered new insights into osteoporosis and aging. With continued microgravity experiments, it is possible that researchers could minimize some of the debilitating effects of aging. Technology and engineering. Not only will the space station help improve human life on Earth, but it will also contribute to a more energy-efficient future. The microgravity environment of the space station will allow scientists to study combustion processes. Improved combustion efficiency leads to improved energy conservation. Just a 2- percent increase in burner efficiency for heaters would save the United States $8 billion per year. Advances in combustion research have already occurred on the shuttle. They have been working on that on several flights already. Fluid physics experiments will be also conducted aboard the space station. By studying fluid behavior, scientists hope to improve their understanding of important activities from energy production to materials engineering. Recent shuttle research. Mr. President, one of the challenges in describing the benefits of NASA research is explaining how it affects our everyday lives. Too often when scientific issues come to this floor, my colleagues become afflicted with that unfortunate condition we are all familiar with known as MEGO--My eyes glaze over. Today, I hope to relate recent scientific findings from the space shuttle program in an easily understandable fashion so that we can understand what our significant investments in this program are yielding. I would like to spend a few minutes describing some of the research conducted on three recent shuttle flights. This discussion is relevant because the research and experiments I will discuss are examples of the type of research that will be conducted on the space station. One of the missions up a short time ago was the life and microgravity sciences mission, STS-78. Earlier this month the astronauts on flight STS-78, also called the Life and Microgravity Sciences, or LMS, mission, returned to Earth after a record-setting 17-day mission. During this mission a number of important experiments were conducted that could lead to new breakthroughs in our understanding of disease, how it occurs, the aging process, as well as basic research in materials formation. Musculoskeletal tests: Research conducted in this area could help scientists develop measures to reduce in-flight muscle atrophy and also fight certain muscle diseases and osteoporosis on Earth. Metabolic experiments: These experiments involved the crew collecting fluid and calcium tracer samples throughout the flight to help investigators measure bone loss and changes in metabolism. Circadian rhythm and sleep study: This study examined the crew's brain waves, eye movement and muscle movement during sleep. Results of this study may also benefit people on Earth by helping people whose sleep schedule suffers from shift changes or jet lag. Neuroscience experiments: These experiments examine the crew's adaptation to microgravity in regard to balance and spatial orientation. What is learned in this area could lead to developments to combat motion sickness in cars, boats or aircraft--as well as in space. Advanced gradient heating facility: Six individual experiments were run that examined solidification of alloys and crystals. The benefits of this research could lead to improvements in the way semiconductors are manufactured. And that would be an enormous step forward. The bubble, drop, and particle unit: A dozen experiments were conducted to examine how gas bubbles and liquid drops interact during heating. Research gathered from experiments completed could lead to advances in material processing on Earth, including the development of new types of glass and ceramics. usmps-3--sts-75 In March of this year, seven astronauts aboard the shuttle Columbia, on flight STS-75, returned to Earth. This flight included two astronauts from the European Space Agency--thus demonstrating that international cooperation is working well with the shuttle program. One of the successes of that flight was the research conducted using the U.S. microgravity payload (USMP-3). Using four major experiments on support trusses in Columbia's payload bay, the astronauts and researchers on the ground, studied the formation of solids and liquids in microgravity. Much of the work conducted on USMP-3 will help calibrate and improve the research done on the space station--thus enabling station researchers to more quickly begin more productive research. Basic research was also conducted with USMP-3. On an experiment dubbed ``Zeno'' researchers were able to identify the precise critical point of the element xenon. The critical point or temperature is that precise point when an element is in a liquid and gas phase at the same time. This research goal was achieved by lowering the xenon sample's temperature and pressure in increments of a millionth of a degree. Because gravity on Earth causes mixing of samples that destabilizes them as they near the critical point, this is research that simply cannot be conducted on Earth. This is basic research. It is not immediately clear what scientists might learn from this experiment. What is clear is that researchers now have a more fundamental understanding of what happens when materials change from one phase to another. This insight could lead to breakthroughs in superconductivity or magnetism. I ask unanimous consent that an article discussing this experiment that appeared in Science News be included in the Record at this point.

Mr. GLENN. Another interesting experiment conducted on USMP-3 is called the isothermal dendritic growth experiment. Dendrites are tiny crystalline structures formed from molten materials as these materials solidify. The size, shape, and orientation of the dendrites determine the strength and durability of steel, aluminum, and superalloys used in automobiles and airplanes. This experiment was designed to test assumptions concerning the effect of gravity driven fluid flows on dendritic formation. What is learned from this experiment could have an impact on such major industrial processes as alloy and steel manufacturing. usml-2--sts-73 Last November the shuttle flight STS-73 returned to Earth thus concluding the space-based portion of the second U.S. microgravity laboratory flight [USML-2]. On board the shuttle were a number of sophisticated scientific instruments to explore biological, chemical, and materials sciences in microgravity. The experiments carried aboard USML-2 include the following: Advanced protein crystallization facility: This facility can grow crystals three different ways. By growing larger, more highly ordered crystals, scientists may be able to better understand biological processes, leading to advances in medicine and agriculture. Astroculture facility: This facility is designed to support growth of plants and to study how starch accumulation in plants is affected by the microgravity environment. Commercial generic bioprocessing apparatus: This research tool allows a variety of experiments to be performed in the area of biomedical testing and drug development, ecological systems development, and biomaterials products and processes. Crystal growth furnace: This furnace is also used for crystal growth experiments. It can process multiple large samples at temperatures above 1,000 degrees Celsius. Drop physics module: This experiments has been developed so that scientists can study several fluid physics phenomena: a simple surface, such as the sphere formed by a liquid drop in the absence of gravity; how a drop reacts to different forces: and how surfaces and compound drops--a drop in one liquid surrounding a drop of a different liquid-- interact. These are important things and what they can learn here from manufacturing processes and for laboratory experiments right here on Earth. Geophysical fluid flow cell: The purpose of this experiment is to study how fluids move in microgravity as a means of understanding fluid flow in oceans, the atmosphere--even stars. Glovebox: The glove box is used for a variety of experiments, and enables hazardous or toxic materials to be incorporated in experiments, while they are isolated from the general environment in the lab. Space acceleration measurement systems: This equipment enables scientists to accurately measure the microgravity environment on the shuttle to better calibrate experiments and design experiments for the station. Surface tension driven convention experiment: This experiment will allow scientists to investigate the basic fluid mechanics and heat transfer of thermocapillary flows generated by temperature variations along free surfaces of liquids in low gravity. Zeolite crystal growth experiment: Zeolite crystals are used in the chemical process industry as filters, catalysts, and adsorbents. The purpose of this experiment is to understand zeolite crystallization and growth so as to achieve high yields of large nearly perfect crystals in space, something that cannot be done here on Earth. What can be learned from all of this? Why am I going through all of these technical terms here? What good is it? Let me talk about that a moment. Knowledge gained from USML-2 research could lead to: Custom tailored drugs, made possible by determining structures of proteins involved in diseases, and then designing drugs to disrupt specific protein; Faster, more efficient and less costly semiconductors for high speed digital circuits, solid state lasers, and infrared detectors; A new form of drug delivery: injecting a disease fighting cell into the body, protected by a polymer outer shell developed in space; Improved crude oil recovery, environmental cleanup and synthetic drug production, based on better knowledge of how chemicals alter the surface properties of liquids; Sophisticated materials production by controlling unwanted fluid flows in molten materials and welding; More accurate weather forecasts, as improved computer models of atmospheric fluid behavior and in predicting ocean flows and weather patterns; Implants, such as synthetic skin and blood vessels for burn victims, based on commercial research into biological materials; Less expensive gasoline, by improving zeolite crystals used to crack crude oil into refined petroleum; Stronger, more easily shaped ceramics from insights into how the microscopic structures of solids form; and More efficient fuel use and pollution control, derived from a better understanding of the combustion process. Mr. President, any one of those items I just mentioned as possible benefits out of this research going into space--just one breakthrough in any one or two of those areas--would make the whole space station program worth every penny that we are going to spend on it. USML-2 technologies are already being used on Earth. For example, devices for early detection of cataracts, based on laser light scattering instruments developed for USML-2 investigations. These are already being used right now. Efficient lighting systems for large commercial nurseries, designed for the space plant growth chamber. These are already in the news. Let me talk for a little while about another issue, the bioreactor. Growing tissue samples--so-called tissue culture--is one of the fundamental goals of biomedical research. Scientists use laboratory containers called bioreactors to grow or culture samples of body tissues. Scientists could use cancer tumors and other tissues that are successfully grown outside the body to test and study treatments, like chemotherapy, for instance, without risking harm to patients, if we were able to do this. These tissues from bioreactors will also offer important medical insights into how tissues grow and develop in the body. NASA engineers have already created breakthrough technologies for cell culture research on the ground and major breakthroughs can be expected once time on the space station becomes available. For example, NASA developed bioreactors have already produced the first 80-day lung culture, the first normal human intestine culture, and major breakthroughs in the quality of ovarian cancer tumor cultures. Though superior tissues may be grown in some Earth bound bioreactors, when compared with traditional sell culturing techniques, there are still limits to the size and quality of the tissue. Many scientists believe that far superior tissues can be grown in the extended microgravity afforded on the space station and preliminary tests on the space station support this idea. Mr. President, when we do these experiments in a laboratory here on Earth, we are still affected by gravity so that experiments that are done in a Petri dish or whatever the experimental laboratory piece of equipment may be, you still have difficulty in that tissue does not grow in its normal way that it would if it was in a 3-D environment in the body. And with the bioreactor in space that kind of growth is possible and has already occurred on the first experiments so we then can have a culture, a tissue culture that is more like what occurs in the real human body. In the long term, tissues cultured outside the body may be used directly even for replacing damaged tissues, treating diseases, or eventually perhaps sometime even replacing organs. Let me give a few highlights of recent research. Dr. Jeanne Becker of the University of South Florida has applied NASA technology to create a breakthrough in culturing ovarian cancer tumors for cancer research. Dr. Josh Zimmerberg of the NIH National Institute for Child Health and Human Development is using NASA-developed bioreactors and NASA- funded resident technical staff to pursue AIDS research goals under a 1994 to 1998 NASA-NIH joint venture. And I would add that the NASA and NIH have 18, I believe there are, memoranda of agreement--they are cooperative agreements in any event back and forth--to work in this area of how the studies of NIH and NASA can be correlated together to get the maximum effect. Dr. Lisa Freed of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology is using a NASA bioreactor to grow cartilage cells on biodegradable scaffolds. Her work shows a clear prospect for using the space station to produce models and transplantable cartilage tissues that could revolutionize treatment for joint diseases and injuries. STS-70 in July 1995. In July 1995, a NASA bioreactor flew to orbit aboard the space shuttle Discovery, and the primary purpose of this experiment was to test the performance of the bioreactor which worked successfully. Poorly differentiated human colon carcinoma cells were grown in a bioreactor aboard the space shuttle Discovery and their growth was compared with that of similar cells in a bioreactor in normal gravity as well as in conventional two dimensional tissue cultures. The space grown clusters of cells were approximately two times larger than the ground-based samples but the significance of this must be determined yet by much study on the ground and many more data points from space experiments. Ground-based analyses by Dr. J. Milburn Jessup of the Harvard Medical School will address the histology of the preserved tissue specimens and the production of specific proteins such as CEA. The NASA-NIH agreement on biomedical research, let me talk about that for a moment. NASA and the National Institutes of Health recently have signed an agreement that will combine the unique talents and experience of both agencies in biomedical research and exploit NASA's bioreactor technology to produce fully three-dimensional tissue cultures for laboratory research. This agreement will increase the capabilities of biomedical researchers throughout NIH by transferring NASA technology to NIH and establishing a center within the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. The new center will teach this new technology to hundreds of neighboring NIH intermural laboratories that currently employ other tissue culture techniques as part of their ongoing research. The initial goal of the agreement is to engineer a human lymph node model for AIDS research and then to extend the use of this technology to a broad spectrum of tissues available at the NIH. This collaborative effort will enable researchers to culture tissues previously deemed too complex for current tissue culturing technology. To accelerate the development of this critical tissue culturing technology, research grants were recently awarded under a NASA research announcement. Included in the selections are support for two research centers located at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge and the Wistar Institute in Philadelphia that will transfer the NASA bioreactor technology for culturing three-dimensional tissues to university researchers. These centers expand the pace of technology transfer in the biotechnology areas begun when NASA and NIH established a joint cooperative program within the NIH's Institute of Child Health and Human Development to exploit the NASA-developed bioreactor technology. Protein crystal growth. Data from space to revolutionize pharmaceuticals in the 21st century. Rapid advances in biotechnology combined with enhanced data from protein structures promise to revolutionize the pharmaceutical industry in this country--indeed, around the world. Researchers seek to define the structures of proteins and ultimately to design drugs that interact with them. Penicillin is a well-known example of a drug that works by blocking a protein's function. In order to define protein structures with precision, researchers analyze protein crystals. Unfortunately, many Earth-grown crystals have flaws that limit their usefulness as data sources or are too small to provide adequate data. Orbital experiments provide researchers with superior protein crystals for analysis and they also help scientists understand the fundamental concepts about the crystallization process. This information can be used to improve crystallization techniques here on Earth. Researchers will soon be able to use enhanced data on protein structure derived from space station research to design a whole new generation of drugs to target a long list of specific diseases. Once again, if we didn't have anything come out of the space station except advances in this particular area, it would be worth far more than anything we are spending on it. Rationally designed drugs promise to revolutionize health care, and orbital research will feed this revolution with the crucial protein structure data it needs. NASA researchers have already used space shuttle missions to produce protein crystals for a variety of clinical conditions including cancer, diabetes, emphysema, and immune system disorders. Let me start that sentence again. They have already used space shuttle missions to produce protein crystals for a variety of purposes. These space-grown crystals were far superior to any crystals grown on Earth for revealing the structure of proteins and supporting the development of drugs. Recombinant DNA human insulin. The Hauptman Institute of Buffalo, in collaboration with Eli Lilly, has obtained an improved description of human insulin-drug complex based on space-grown crystals. They are currently working on the design of a nontoxic drug that will bind insulin, thereby improving the treatment of diabetic patients. Porcine elastase. Elastase is a protein which is involved in emphysema. The refined structure of this protein was obtained using space-grown crystals. Vertex Pharmaceuticals is designing drugs based on this data to improve treatment for emphysema. HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. NASA is supporting the microgravity crystallization of HIV reverse transcriptase. That is a critical enzyme for viral replication. It is believed this research will better define the enzyme structure, so that effective pharmaceuticals can be developed to inhibit the HIV virus. What could be more important than looking into that? The structural biology space program at NASA's Center in Excellence in Biotechnology was the first to publish a structure of a major human antibody that recognizes the AIDS virus. That was a breakthrough. Human serum albumin, HSA. That is a primary binding protein in the blood and is responsible for distributing drugs throughout the body. Eli Lilly and Co. is using this structural information from space-grown crystals to design drugs that exhibit improved interactions with HSA. The potential impact of this HSA structure on drug design and delivery is also enormous. Mr. President, that takes us through quite a listing here of some technical things I thought it was important to get into the Record. Let me talk for a moment about the international aspects. Thirteen nations, including the United States, Canada, Italy, Belgium, The Netherlands, Denmark, Norway, France, Spain, Germany, United Kingdom, Japan, and Russia will join together in the largest scientific cooperative program in history. This is the first time this number of nations has been able to draw together and run this type of project together. Drawing on Russian expertise in long-duration space flight and existing Russian technology and equipment, the international space station will help redirect the focus of Russian technology programs to nonmilitary pursuits. Perhaps more important, the space station will serve as a symbol of the opportunities available through peaceful international initiatives. There will be several laboratories aboard the space station. One United States lab, one other United States facility, a European space agency Columbus Orbital Facility, a Japanese experiment module, and Russian research modules. Partner nations will contribute $9 billion to the U.S. cooperative effort. International contribution means international cooperation, bringing together the best scientific minds worldwide to answer fundamental scientific questions. Since NASA began, the agency has been very effective. They have reached out to the community at large with programs to educate the average U.S. citizen on the contributions of NASA to society. Astronauts make thousands of appearances every year all over the world, speaking with people of all ages about their experiences and their research. Traveling aerospace education units, sponsored by NASA, visited over 500,000 students last year, and tens of thousands of students participated in urban community enrichment programs to get students interested in science and mathematics. These inspirational efforts are an investment in our future. It is a future including a fully operational space station. Students here on Earth will be able to place experiments on the space station and run those experiments, indeed, from their classrooms. NASA virtual reality technology will make it possible for students to experience life on the space station without ever leaving their classrooms. Mr. President, these are enormous steps forward. They will only become reality if we have the space station. I know there are those, and we will probably have a vote on it tomorrow sometime, who wish to knock out support for the space station. I think that would be extremely myopic in our vision of the future. I think the space station has the promise of developing wholesale changes and contributing to the changes in medicine, materials research and all those things I have gone through, not in complete detail today because any one of these items could be talked about as long as I have stood here this afternoon. But I have tried to hit the high points of some of the things I think are important as to why the space station should continue into the future. There are some other areas that are less quantifiable, that are a little less describable. That is how we look at ourselves. Are we willing to put money into this research for the future? If there is one thing, it seems to me, we have learned throughout the past in this country it is that we, more than any other nation on Earth, we have been the ones who have had the curiosity. We were the ones who did the research, whether macroresearch or geographical research or microresearch, going into the laboratory and trying to get down to discover things at atom size. We have been the Nation that led the whole world in this kind of technology and this research. However every single time it has not resulted in a home run. But if there is one thing we have learned in the past in this country it is that money spent on basic research, the basic fundamental breakthrough type research, is that has usually paid off in the future beyond any possible thing we can imagine at the outset. I think this space station, with its capability to do research in microgravity over an extended period of time, has the greatest potential of anything we have come into for a long time. Not only that research, but also just having the space station, and having space flights, having this kind of research go on, is exciting to our young people. I run into kids, young people of grade school, high school, college age, all the time in my travels around the country and back home in Ohio, who are excited about these things. They want to know about it, what it is like. What experiments can they run? They are very interested in it. A lot of them are studying math and science now because of their interest in these programs. I do not want to take that encouragement away. I want to see that encouragement expanded and continued. I wish we had money enough to send up several space stations. Maybe that would hasten things somewhat. I am realist enough to know that is not about to happen. But these programs have truly been an inspiration to our young people. It has given them goals, has given them a vision of what we in this country can do. If we can do it in science research why can we not improve our Government? Why can we not improve our relationships with each other? Why can we not do lots of things? The answer is, we can. This stands as a symbol to our young people of encouragement to be curious, to do the research. Not just in this, but in a lot of different areas. It is inspirational to our young people and I think to those of us who are older also. Because we do see ourselves leading the world with this technology and leading research. We do not want to lay that kind of lead down. We cannot afford to see some other nation take up that kind of a lead. Being a leader in technology and research is what results in us having control of our own future. To take any other view of it, to say we will cut this out because we have some other needs, I think would be very shortsighted. Do we have other needs? Of course. Can we provide for some of those other needs? Yes, I think we can. At the same time, we do not want to give up what I think is one of our greatest projects for the future, and that is the space station. Mr. President, we are always faced with the people who say what good is it, as though you are supposed to know the results of research in advance. Of course, we have the example of Faraday talking to Disraeli, the British Prime Minister. It has been often quoted. This was in the early dawn of the electrical age, when they had some sparks jumping from one bottle to another. Disraeli is supposed to have asked Faraday, ``But what good is it?'' Faraday's reply was, ``What good is a baby?'' What is the potential? We do not know. Yet, out of that curiosity, that research, came the whole electronic, electrically powered world that we know today, with all the benefits and the standard of living and improvements in health that is brought to us and the whole world. Another example of this is one I used here on the floor last year. Daniel Webster rose in the Senate Chambers, even as we rise and debate this subject every year. Daniel Webster rose back in his day in the early 1800's when they were debating whether to buy some land for the Government, to acquire some land west of the Mississippi River. Daniel Webster was against that. He put into very eloquent words what he thought about what good it could possibly be out there. This is what he said referring to that area beyond the Mississippi. What do we want with this vast worthless area, this region of savages and wild beasts, of deserts of shifting sands and whirlwinds of dust and cactus and prairie dogs? To what use could we ever hope to put these great deserts or those endless mountain ranges, impenetrable and covered to their very base with eternal snow? What can we ever hope to do with the western coast, a coast of 3,000 miles, rock-bound, cheerless, uninviting, and not a harbor on it? What use have we for this country? Mr. President, I will never vote one cent from the public treasury to place the Pacific coast one inch nearer to Boston than it is now. Daniel Webster's quote reminds us that when we are looking to territorial exploration, or whether it be microexploration in the laboratory, or combining the two in research in new places to travel and microexperimentation on something like the space station, we really cannot predict what may come from that kind of curiosity. Curiosity has built this country, how to do things better, how to do things in a better way, whether it is to establish a better democracy and a better representation of the people, how to do industrial research, how to do transportation research, all of these different areas--medical research--that we lead the world in. I hope that we can have a resounding vote, when the vote comes up, if there are efforts made to cut back on the space station. Mr. President, I have gone on longer than I have before when this subject has come up because I thought it was important this year, in support for the space station, to just at least name some of these areas that I know do have big titles. They are difficult to understand, but they are the scientific research that is the building blocks for everything else that happens in our society. I think it is important that we establish very solid support for this program. I yield the floor. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.