Exploring the Unknown - NASA's History Office

EXPLORING THE UNKNOWN 291
completed.
Another criticism relates to the tendency to regard the principal federal user agencies
as the “market” for civil remote sensing and to judge the need for an operational
system based on their willingness to budget for the cost. As shown by our listing
of the many U.S. interests in civil remote sensing, the direct mission interests of
federal agencies represent only a fraction of the overall U.S. interest. No federal
agency has mission interests broad enough to represent the total “market.” In any
case, the federal budget process is at best a very imperfect “market place”; to give
one example, federal agencies do not have the options for separate financing of
capital investment that are normally followed in the private sector.
The consultants agree that users of civil remote sensing should pay a reasonable charge
for the data products they receive (transparencies, prints tapes, etc.), and would
expect such charges to cover the out-of-pocket costs of producing them. The question
of further recoupment of costs should receive further study; such study must,
however, give full recognition to the public interest benefits of civil remote sensing
for which there may be not identifiable customers to charge and to the broader
national U.S. interests served by civil remote sensing that are not the budgetary
responsibility of any federal department or agency. The basic policy decision on
continuing U.S. involvement in remote sensing should be made on an overall
national policy basis and not depend on user funding commitments or resolution
in advance of the complex questions of user charges and cost recoupment.
[11] b. Scale of funding and other commitments. The budgetary costs of a continuing
U.S. involvement in civil remote sensing are a matter of legitimate concern and
deserve careful consideration; an early priority should be given to the development
of cost projections for the principal programmatic options.
Current rough NASA projections (which require validation and refinement) suggest
that a constructive evolution of operational civil remote sensing data services,
including production and dissemination of data to primary users and analysis centers,
could be accommodated within a budget averaging somewhere in the range
of $150 to $300 million per year (FY 1979 dollars) over the next decade. In addition,
there would be a need for strong continuing R&D and experimental applications
efforts (where some savings might result from the availability of
operational services) and some added user analysis costs required as federal agencies
learn to take full operational advantage of remote sensing and to combine
these data with data from their conventional sources.
Costs of this magnitude, while considerable, do not constitute a major or “uncontrollable”
budget threat. Insofar as they go beyond R&D, they can be regarded conceptually
as a necessary new element in the Nation’s continuing overall
investment in space technology—an essential step for realizing benefits from this
investment that would otherwise be lost.
The implications of an “operational commitment,” in the sense of an assurance of
continuity of data services, may sometimes be exaggerated. On the space segment
side, the provision of continuous data services would not, in principle, have to
represent a major expansion over a continuing R&D effort. Reasonable data continuity
has been maintained—in fact if not by policy—by R&D satellites since the
launching of LANDSAT-1; the additional costs required in the future can be minimized
by careful integration of R&D and operational planning. On the user side,
the necessary expenditures by each using agency can be decided on a case-by-case
basis, since each use has its own timetable of operational need and readiness.
Policy decisions assuring data continuity and a continuing future U.S. involvement
in civil remote sensing should be backed up by the budgetary support
required. However, the commitment level for a continuing U.S. involvement and
the commitments of each federal user can be controlled through the regular budget
process.