Exploring the Unknown - NASA's History Office

RECOMMENDATION TO THE SECRETARY OF AGRICULTURE
Since there have been technical problems in reaching LACIE objectives and the
research direction has changed, GAO recommends that the Secretary of Agriculture provide
cognizant congressional committees with periodic assessments of the LACIE project,
the experimentation with other crops, and the experiments with early warning of crop
damage and crop condition assessment. (See p. 21.)
AGENCY COMMENTS
The issues in this report have been discussed with LACIE officials in the three participating
agencies, and their comments have been incorporated as appropriate. NASA
believes that LACIE area and yield estimates for the Soviet Union should not be compared
to the Soviet’s figures for area and yield because [iv] the latter are suspect. However, the
LACIE project makes this comparison, and Agriculture reports the figures in its regular
periodic reports. . . .
Document II-27
Document title: Charles J. Robinove, Director, EROS Program Office, Geological Survey,
U.S. Department of the Interior, Memorandum to Staff of the EROS Program,
“Optimism vs. pessimism or where do we go from here? (some personal views),”
December 10, 1975.
Source: NASA Historical Reference Collection, NASA History Office, NASA
Headquarters, Washington, D.C.
In bargaining with the Bureau of the Budget to gain approval for an Earth resource survey satellite
system, the Department of the Interior was forced to accept an initial provisional program rather than
the fully operational program it sought. To become fully operational, the program would have to prove
its utility. As time passed and progress was slower than anticipated, this bargain hung like Damacles’
sword over the program. In an effort to boost severely sagging morale in the EROS program office,
Charles J. Robinove prepared this memorandum.
[1] December 10, 1975
Memorandum
To: Staff of the EROS Program
From: Charles J. Robinove
EXPLORING THE UNKNOWN 275
Subject: Optimism vs. pessimism or where do we go from here?
(some personal views)
In the past months the staff of the EROS Program has shown increasing pessimism
and discontent regarding the future of the EROS Program, the thrust of research and
operations, programmatic and administrative problems, and the place of the scientific
staff. All of us, from top to bottom, have at times been discouraged in our individual
progress and in the progress of the program—this is only natural in a growing and evolving
area of science within the Federal bureaucracy.