american agriculture would not do that. the fact is there is a lot of concern about the use of vaccine in a country that is free of fmd with vaccination as the same thing with high path ai. we cannot ai. we cannot go around the world and say one thing no one country because of our position and do something different to somebody else. >> thanks clicks thank you, sir. >> this is not our first rodeo. when it when it comes to avian influenza this is not our first rodeo this year. we have seen this a lot more than we want to. one of the things we try to focus on on not dealing with symptoms of problem causes just talk to us about causes. is there any way to address

this challenge by addressing not just the symptoms but by addressing root causes? and clicks. >> you consider the root cause, the introduction we have not seen this. institute the bio security of the farm level. clicks backyard farmers which are increasingly important in numerous as well. place one of the things we have done the earlier avian influenza outbreaks came not from wild birds but lovebird

auctions. clicks yes. they have done a wonderful job. that metropolitan new york area was once very heavily involved with certain types. >> probably not a fair question. >> as i said, we have not evaluated the current response that we are aware of the challenges. there will be new challenges identified. issued a couple of his strategies. how this should be done. a new element that will have to be addressed. >> thank you. >> once or twice. >> twice. >> the wildest pronunciation of your time. >> the next hearing.

>> the step back and generalize we think of this is an emerging infection where global threats are local threats in the human animal interface is very important. we are always we are always worried because the virus is constantly changing and we are very much worried about what is happening in the rest of the world with avian influenza. keen to know what is going on. >> senator, it is important to make one critical. this virus came in 1997 in china. age five in one outbreak in europe and asia and there was concern that we put money around the world into that area. we did not put enough. if we would have eradicated

information this would not have happened. clicks that's a great. i'm going to call you doctor one more time. >> i am going to be rethinking my entire bio security plan. increasing the structural operational protocol. ultimately ultimately it is my problem in my farm in any to do something about it. i will be training my employees better controlling traffic on and off my farm command i will take steps to try to control dust. i would love to include the use of the vaccine in my toolbox my come to bio security efforts on my farm. >> that was a great response i will disclose with this thought.

in terms of nautical terms the navy challenges like all hands on deck. this is all hands on deck. i'm pleased to see that you are focused big-time on this and working collaboratively together and i commend you on that. i appreciate what you said about taking responsibility yourself which is what needs to be done. home depot, home depot in minnesota, and at campaign this is you can do it. we can help. you can do it but we we can help. it is going to come again. different mutations. we just have to learn from our mistakes. figure out what works. that which does not work. great hearing.. great hearing. thank you. >> thank you. one thing we would like to do is offer the witnesses one last comment.

i have to first go to doctor clifford. how would we? >> we talk about one world one health and the global health security. we have got to be able to address these issues and make sure they are done. we address the human pandemic concern, but we basically reduced the funding and support necessary to continue. >> but how have we done it? clicks how? >> how? >> you have to eradicated from the poultry. it was it was in the poultry. it was killing the wild birds. but but what happened because of its allow us to continue when it became an age five in age five and eight it adapted itself to wild waterfowl and killed ducks.

that is the problem. we have the rid of it. so you stop the exchange of virus back and forth. >> the protocols and other countries not as rigorous? they don't destroy flocks. >> it depends upon the country. and the -- and asia, parts of asia people will actually sleep with the birds and have pigs outside. it is a whole different world. but if we do not help those cases many of those kind of diseases may come back to this country. >> that's my. you are saying we did not spread out the money to eradicated. i am not sure that we could. >> we could could have tried. >> i understand. >> again, thank you. i think you know we have learned lessons. we want this process to be faster. is critical we get in there, kill birds quickly, and get command if the producers back on their feet faster. that is something that needs

to be taken a heart clicks thank you. >> one of the reasons senator carper talked about the phonetic pronunciation. we don't pronunciation. we don't have a real good track record ourselves. if there if there is a bad pronunciation it probably came from this committee. >> influenza has been around for a long time and continues to be a major challenge. the big picture is continued investment and improved vaccines including the so-called universal influenza vaccine really important to get ahead of this problem for the future. >> mr. curry. >> yes. i talked in my opening opening statement about how important coordination and plans are. it is easy to sit here and talk, but it is difficult to adjust a real-life situation. this is somewhat unique in that we have had an outbreak, but we expect and are worried about the next. we can actually learn lessons now and figure out

what our capabilities need to be in other parts of the country so that we can potentially learn quickly and be ready for what we think might be coming. >> professor. >> thank you, senator. i think that we need to help and protect mr. snyders of our country. we have seen a number of people involved directly in our culture fall for many years. we have these large highly efficient means of producing food and poultry but i think really the producers and the farmers, the family farmers -- this is a wake-up call for us, i think. we have enjoyed the best quality safest food supply in the world. now world. now we are importing shell eggs from other countries. what is wrong with that picture? and we sometimes get into problems only when we import food not to mention other

kinds of materials drugs etc. thank you. >> first of all, you took the words out of my mouth. my own background, parents were raised on small dairy farms. the tradition of the family farmers dwindling. we cannot allow people to remain exposed. i have learned that it is exposed. i had coverage. i thought he was having a hard time obtaining the coverage. coverage. i am afraid he is completely exposed. we will work together to see what we can do to help those in mr. snyders position and not just mr. schneider, but everyone affected. that is the real commitment of this committee. it is not in our jurisdiction, but our ability to hold an oversight hearing, to expose the particular problem. this is about getting people to admit we have a problem. i believe this is a problem that must be addressed urgently. >> one of the things i i

think that might be able to help people like me is just the indemnity payment formula. one of those things is specific to egg laying farms. indemnification could be based upon future value. that that is where the egg industry is just a little bit different. over weeks those animals are raised and sent to market. the egg industry, those animals are in my facility for over a a year, sometimes two. the value of those eggs that is where if there is indemnity payment based upon future value, that would help me an awful lot. >> as we discussed, there has to be something like -- in my business' if you have a catastrophic loss to destroy your flock. i was a

catastrophic loss. we have to do something. there has to be some indemnification shum assurance that will keep you in business business interruption insurance. i am shocked we do not have that either as a a government program or in the private insurance. again, that is a take away. i i just want to thank the witnesses for your testimony this committee really does have a great deal of sympathy for your loss and we are dedicated to doing what we can do help you out. his hearing record will remain open until july 23. this hearing is adjourned. [inaudible conversations]

and finally, the ig noted research time is constrained with a six person who. we need that seventh member. my top recommendations are the following. prioritize the programmatic goals, reviewed the essential resources for extended mammalian research including that seventh crewmember, scientist astronauts whose nominal responsibility is research, and finally to extend biological experiments to cover substantial portion of mammalian life cycle and incorporate martian gravity equivalents wherever possible. given sufficient resources i am

very optimistic that nasa can deliver another decade of rigorous translation research. i sincerely thank you for your support of the program and the opportunity to a year. >> thank you, dr. pawelczyk. i think all the witnesses for your testimony. members are reminded committee will limit questioning to five minutes. the chair now recognizess himself for five minutes. this question will be for gerste gerstenmeyer mr.. the space x mission had a water filtration device, docking mechanism and a new spacesuits on board. can you explain the impact of the loss of these items on the iss and commercial crew programs and how do you plan to mitigate these impacts? >> we will start with the international docking adaptor

scheduled for commercial crew. it was lost. we wanted to have two units on orbit because of -- before beginning commercial crew flight. we still we believe we will support that schedule we will take part from a third unit that was being assembled at the spare or back up and and work with the contract to go ahead and extend that and get it delivered on time. the next docking adaptor is scheduled to go in the next several months and we will figure out right cargo flights to take up and one docking adaptor will be sufficient to support the commercial group program. we can accommodate that. the biggest impact to us is the cost associated with manufacturing a third unit from the spare parts that remain. on a multi filtration bench we think before the japanese transfer vehicle flies in august we should be able to get a new transfer bid manufactured through the outstanding work of the boeing corporation to help us expedite that work and we have plans in place to do that.

we have been trending down on the toxic organic compounds aboard space station so we are still in stable configuration with the beds we have on word that. we will continue to monitor that carefully. the loss of the space suit we will now reconfigure one of the spaces we planned on returning to the space station, we will do more repairs on orbit and we will have available and we put a contract change in place to work with the orbital sciences corp to look at carrying space suits and a future for us so we have mitigating all three concerns that you have. the impacts will be not significant and we can accommodate them but there are impacts. >> thank you, mr. elbon. >> i will lead to what mr. read the 16 said. the most significant involvement from boeing's perspective is the docking adaptor and will be

ready to fly, as mr. gerstenmeyer mentioned to working closely with nasa to understand water filtration issue and get those components ready to launch on the next resupply vehicles that go up. i agree we are in good shape to support the crew on orbit. >> thank you. next question, nasa at aerospace, this is for mr. gerstenmeyer nasa gerstenmeyer aerospace safety advisory panel has recommended as nasa sses iss like extension it joy also reviewed the objectives for continued iss use and clearly articulate to ensure the cost and safety risks are balanced given that human space flight is inherently risky, that risk always needs to be weighed against the value to be gained by the endeavour. what are nasa's objectives for extending iss operations through

2024? >> of the human research front, there are many medical investigations we're looking at that ridge ascribed by other panel members about radiation environment, the microgravity environment and we need to understand those that have those risks mitigated and understood before we are ready to commit to logger endeavors in space and those are all in plans in place, we have detailed investigations in work the current 1-year expedition aboard the space station addressing many of those issues and concerns and that is moving forward. >> thank you. finally for mr. martin, what insight does nasa had been to the mishap investigations performed by orbital and space x? looking back at the apollo one accident the challenger accident, and the columbia accident do you believe that the investigations are benefiting from an independent review separate from the contractors or

the program? >> my and your standing is under the faa since the faa a granted a license to the private contractors those days x and orbital katie k under the contract they are beating the indexing nation. with the orbital mishap nasa has a separate review ongoing but there isn't the same kind of independent accident investigation board if it were a nestle and failure and we are currently conducting a review that will look at the concerns about the independence of a contractor let accident investigation. >> thank you. that completes my questions. i now recognize the ranking member, mr. edwards. >> thank you to the witnesses again. mr. martin's report of september

of 2014 found that nasa's estimate for the iss budget $3 million to $4 billion per year through 2024 is overly optimistic. that was reiterated in your testimony. i am really curious from mr. gerstenmeyer if you could talk about the basis of your estimate for projected crew and cargo transportation costs that support iss and i would note in that for example there have been three cargo mishaps in the last eight months. was that factored into your projection for costs? if it would seem that that alone would begin tissued costs those accidents which one could expect might happen over the course of operations another, to 2024, so it would be helpful to know what

your basis for those estimated costs are and respond to the challenges mr. martin has laid out in september of 2014. >> we have been working aggressively to look at cost management and cost control. we have consolidated some contracts into a smaller number of contracts. we are also using competition to attempt to drive down the costs. we are in the process right now we are in a blackout period of the cargo resupply service number 2 contract award. we got extremely good competition from that activity and we believe competition will help us control and get those costs down. we are actively working we are aware of costs issues and teams have objected acquisition strategies, effective consolidation plans and removing costs from the program and we

believe we can hold those costs down and we can provide objective evidence of what we have done and seen in past contracts versus futures contracts. >> since your 2014 report, would it still be your assessment that nasa's projections are overly optimistic? and in your analysis would you factor in three mishaps, the failures in terms of looking at the cost? >> not exactly sure what do they factored how many accidents in but their cost projections are overly optimistic and continue to be. iss has shown an 8% increase annually in cost over the life of the program.

2011-2013 and extending the life of the station to 2024, it is projected that in 2024, 59% of station expenses will be 4 crew and cargo transportation. that is a big piece of the high. >> for all the panelists, if you look at nasa's rationale for extending to 2024 they include research and technology discoveries that benefit society enabling human exploration to mars establishing commercial crew and cargo to lower its orbit and sustain commercial use of space, just curious whether any of you believe what nasa's top priority should be, that is a big list in itself and it is hard to figure out what should be first. dr. pawelczyk. >> thank you for that question and it is a great one and is extremely important for the

subcommittee to take on. you mention the idea of discovery science. what are the big science questions we want to have answered. we may not recognize the utility of those for a period of years. a piece of research equipment we flew on my mission in 1998 was largely use in the nobel prize winning awards. that is 16 years to recognize some return on that investment but it is an important return nonetheless. the translation, this idea of what do we need to do to go further? you mention the commercialization aspects. we have contended in the scientific community for many years is not our job to sequence those priorities. it is the job of government, it is the job of either the executive branch or the legislative branch and i will be the that you to sort out which is which but you have been pretty clear at this point when i look at the authorization language, you have said mars is

very important but is not either/or it is and. nasa will also maintain a fundamental research program. i think you already told us mars is that answer and when you look at the research that remains to be done, the risks that sit in the red most of them, half of them are associated with the extended duration on mars. a mission of three years duration. i don't know of another research platform that will provide us extended research capability to enter those three year questions. the iss is our choice for that. that is how it should be used. >> thank you, mr. chairman. >> thank you. i would like to recognize mr. brooks. >> thank you, mr. chairman. mr. gerstenmeyer, in light of the recent launch failures is nasa reassessing their insight and oversight approach for the developed and, production

operations of commercially provided vehicles the service the international space station? >> as part of the accident investigation with the space x event that occurred we have part of our commercial crew program, representatives are part of that activity with space x so they are actively involved in analyzing and understanding what occurred on the cargo vehicle with an eye towards any design changes or process changes or hardware changes the need to be made in the crew program so we are involved in transitioning that information from this failure directly into the crew program. >> i appreciate that response. on behalf of nasa in my experience nasa has a tremendous amount of insight and expertise and i would encourage nasa to show the leadership did you indicate they are showing and the management skill you indicate they are doing to assist with commercial crew so they can be more successful than

they have been most recently. this question is with respect to mr. elbon and mr. gerstenmeyer. the loss of the space x vehicle two weeks ago has been described as the big loss. part of that is replacement's cases for the international space station. what are the implications to the international space station program for the loss of this suit? >> we will take one of the suits that is on orbit and refurbish it instead of returning it to the ground and we will develop a capability to transport suits on all of our vehicles to bring other suits up to space station as needed to support the e d a activity. >> anything to add? >> the space suits themselves are not part of our sustaining contract. i'm not on the middle of that but we held nasa with analysis necessary to figure out which activities need to be done on tv a to make sure space station can

continue to operate with capabilities that exist. >> what was the cost of that lost space suit? >> i don't have a specific cost for the record. we have 13 spaces available to us from the shuttle program. this was one of the suits, we will not replace that suit. it will continue to be lost and will not be replaced. we have sufficient suits in the inventory to continue to operate safely through the 2024 and beyond time frame. >> the items that nasa has on the most recent launches who is absorbing the cost of those lost items that were being transported to the international space station? is that commercial crew provider or nasa? >> for the nasa items the losses are borne by nasa and we estimate the nasa cargo loss at roughly $110 million on the space x flight. the researchers, they are responsible for the hardware

they bear the loss from the research hardware that was lost and that is how it splits out. >> is there going to be any future efforts by nasa in as much as we are hiring private contractors to require private contractors to reimburse nasa for equipment materials lost because private contractors were unsuccessful in launching their vehicles? >> our contracts today have not final milestone payment associated with successful delivery of cargo, they will not receive payment for that milestone and we are investigating the advantages and joy disadvantages of having essentially insurance provided for these other capabilities to provide lost cargo in the future. we haven't made a decision whether that is cost-effective for us or not but we are looking at that to see if it is effective to have insurance or better that we just essentially indemnify end-users and bear the risk of the loss.

>> the moneys that will be withheld as payment for the private entity spacecraft providers, is that enough to offset the loss nasa has incurred? >> it offsets a portion but not the entire amount. >> american taxpayers can rest assured that least we will have some recruitment of the losses that american taxpayers have suffered as a consequence of the private sector providers failure to provide the represented kraft? >> yes. >> that is all, mr. chairman. i yield to the remainder of my time. >> thank you. i now recommend -- recognize the ranking member from texas, is she here? mr. berra from california. i am sorry. >> thank you mr. chairman, thank the ranking member for this hearing. as a child growing up in

southern california in the aerospace industry in the 60s and early 70s it was remarkable what we could accomplish and when we think about the international space station really truly is an engineering marvel, some things that over time has as the witnesses have noted 15 years of uninterrupted cumins living in space, remarkable. when we think about this and think about where we want to go we have to continue to think big as that nation. we have to not be afraid of thinking and addressing the issues particularly as we dream about human space travel to mars. we don't know how we are going to get there but that should not daunt us or stop by santa should not stop us from making the investments that allow us to continue to incrementally dream big. that is what we have done for about our existence as human beings.

we have not been afraid to explore. we have not been afraid to ask those questions and certainly this body has a responsibility to continue to push for the next generation of discovery. that said, as we increasingly move toward this coordinated role between what the public invests in partnership with commercialization of space, the last few months have been a bit concerned. we have been fortunate that the accidents did not have human beings and only cargo but as we look at this partnership of commercialization and human space travel and taking human beings to the space station and beyond it is a bit worrisome. my question but let me direct it to mr. martin, he touched in light of these recent accidents and the investigation of these

accidents could you elaborates and expand on nasa's role as in making sure there is a transfer investigation? there is concern that commercial entities are investigating without nasa's roll? >> more. bill, you could go into greater detail, under the contracts, commercial space flight, the faa gives the license and under the contract contractor leaves the accident investigation review, unlike past "challenger" accident were nasa itself would convene an independent investigation. my sense is that nasa is in advisory member of orbital's and since the space x's accident review board did they are not meeting that activity. >> nasa team is participating with the faa a team and the ntsb accident board, they developed just as nasa has done and the

way they disposition each fault item is all three entities, nasa, faa and ntsb and space x have to agree this item is closed and not contributing to this accident still is by consensus, engineering teams easily led by space x but fully represented by the government and the government what did they accept or joy not accept what the root cause was. this was an effective way to have good insight, we can do our own independent research and contribute directly to the conclusions and make sure we are representing the government so we have the best from nasa participating in those activities along with the contractor and that activity. >> do you feel confident that there is that transparency in there and we as a body, congress will be able to see the transference and get full details? >> it has in extremely transparent. is the same with your investigational.

we had the same transparency with them and it has been effective in tweet from joy direct evidence of where the transparency is and how is being implemented. >> with that i yield back. >> i would like to recognize the gentleman from florida, mr. posey. >> mr. gerstenmeyer, we know that planning for the iss began 20 years before it was actualized, to let 2024. does nasa have plans for a station in lower for bed beyond 2020 for or this nasa intends to leave it entirely to commercial companies? >> we are looking to see if we

can leave low earth orbit to commercial companies. what we are doing is allowing them to do investigations on station to see that they can get market return and it makes sense to do that we believe the agency's role has been to push further out into space, going to the region around the moon. we call the proving ground region, we will move our endeavors into that further region that helps the agency get prepared to take bigger missions ultimately towards mars. at this point we envision lower earth orbit to be more of a private sector activity and we will use the remaining lifetime of station to let the private sector understand the benefits of microgravity research to terrestrial investigations and see if it helps some from a fundamental research standpoint. >> great to hear. our government is investing in ryan, dragons, c s t 100 cygnus, what role will capsules play once the international

space station reaches an end of its life? >> reporter: companies have an interest beyond the nasa need. they are building on intellectual property to operate these capsules for the round purposes. of the private station we discussed earlier is available they can use the transportation system to deliver cargo to it, they can deliver crew to it outside the government so this will allow the private sector to gay transportation services on its own from these companies we have enabled through initial startup contracts on iss. >> that is great. the space shuttle and x 37 both examples of reusable spacecraft went on a runway. also had records of success. has nasa rule out the use of reusable runway capable vehicles for crew or cargo in the future? >> the simple answer is no.

in the case of the orion vehicle is geared toward deep space activities were carrying wings makes it difficult to re-enter f-cat miss year so the deep space vehicles will typically be a capsule type vehicle but for low earth orbit transportation went vehicles are very nice, have many advantages as we saw through the shuttle program. >> i yield back. >> thank you. i would like now to recognize the gentleman from virginia. >> thank you, mr. chairman. mr. gerstenmeyer, on the one hand we had three unfortunate losses we previously mentioned. on the other hand it seems commercial space industry is getting ready to grow exponentially adding great value to the economy and civilization of new satellites, internet space tourism even mars. talk about these accidents and the proper perspective

especially compared to train and airline and automobile accidents 30,000 deaths last year, nasa tragedies and all the transportation accidents in history. i will looking at the relatively two or three that came up in the right perspective compared to the last 150 years? >> that is interesting question. and all three of these cases there has been no loss of life. the basic processes and procedures are in place so we protected the public the launch site, did the right things. the important thing is to not get so fixated on the problem but how can we learn from this problem? as an emerging industry in developing new transportation, the more we fly there will be small problems. they are acceptable in this case. we described earlier the impact our not devastating, they heard research but are still recoverable. the real tragedy will be if we don't learn from these events

and don't understand the engineering behind the failures and improve overall the industry sell just as the aviation industry has suffered a lot of failures throughout its history the reason for its success today and the safety we get in the aircraft industry is a result of lessons learned and lessons being applied to build better and safer aircraft. we need to do the same in the space industry, take learning from these events, internalize it, not be afraid of it, make a design changes, change the way we build spacecraft and build a more robust transportation system. i see this as a painful but may be somewhat necessary learning process, excellent to learn on cargo. we do not want to learn on crew. we will learn from cargo and apply those lessons to crew. >> thank you for your positive and optimistic attitude. they are very much appreciated. while you have the microphone the aerospace safety advisory panel identified micrometer your

ruling and orbital debris as a top safety risk facing the iss. how does nasa address these concerns about orbital debris? >> we have shielding on board our space station and spacecraft that can protect against some degree, we cannot protect for all debris. we recently and lament and changes to the progress vehicle, the progress launch that occurred last weekend. it had to debris shields on a cargo vehicle so we are continuing to improve the debris protection capability, and we actively train on orbit just as we train terrestrial leave for fire drills etc. we train for evacuation drills of space station in case we get hit by a piece of mega media would agree that penetrates the pressure shell. we are prepared in that event. is our highest risk and will cross the risks and area we protect it with the shielding levels we can protect for at this stage of station's life. >> thank you very much.

toucher pawelczyk you testified during the 2,000s, nasa's priorities, a lot of scientists left the field. do you have concerns about a level of work force and expertise in the field today especially as we get ready to think about manned missions to mars? >> thank you for the question. i would say the short insert is no. you are absolutely right, one of the great things that has happened since 2011 is nasa has reinstituted a ground-based program. if you look at the numbers of people applying they are in the hundreds per solicitation right now. the active funding that is happening in bringing research up to the station you are starting to see that coming back but what is more interesting is

we are seeing maybe some of the youngest scientists that have school in the entrepreneurial spirit saying this is something i would like to take an opportunity and check out. the iss research conference this week is three times bigger than it was a year ago. there is a growing spirit and we need to continue to feed that spirit and i think ratings will happen as a result. >> thank you for your enthusiasm. i yield back. >> i would like to recognize the gentleman from oklahoma. >> thank you, mr. chairman and thank you to all our analyst for coming and testifying before this committee. mr. gerstenmeyer, i appreciate your long and distinguished service that nasa going back to negotiating with a russians on the mir program and the other things in the 90s. that is where i would like to start today. when you think about right now given the recent accidents we

have gone through we are seeing how important our reliances on things like the russian progress cargo spacecraft and the russians lawyers crew spacecraft, given how the relationship has changed between the united states and russia, we have even heard the russians talk about pulling out of the international space station, what is your judgment on how this relation can go forward? how is it going on not civil space side given the strained relations in other areas? can you share your opinion on that? >> on the civil space side the relationship between the united states between nasa and the russians is very strong. we exchanged the everyday back and forth, past many commands.

and through operations in space and the relationship is extremely transparent in spite of the governmental tensions between the two government so there is a challenge of human spaceflight transcends all little bit the toughness of the outside world and we are working extremely effectively with the russians. the recent progress what they have been sharing data with us working together to actively get ready to fly crew on the twenty-third of this month with the russians and they have been open, sharing data, helping us understand our needs of the relationship is wrong. >> how confident are you they will continue the partnership beyond 2020? >> i think they are working through governmental approval process. is likely by the end of this year when their federal space program gets approved there will be an extension the russians

support the space station through 2024. >> mr elbon, we heard the ig has a report on the operation of the iss will become more difficult because of the ability to take replacement parts to the international space station. recently boeing had a report that might not have contradicted that dealt with some of those issues, can you share with us the boeing position? they were suggesting beyond 2020 things get different. your report suggested 2028. share with us how you deal with those the issues? >> thanks for the question. things like the structural integrity of the elements on board, the ability to survive micro meteoroid penetration, came to the conclusion through 2028 is feasible relative to the hardware on orbit. the other part of the question is the logistics, resupply to

replay's boxes that fail on orbit computers, etc. to supply the crew, based on the logistics mom nasa has laid out and is using for the procurement of cargo resupply surfaces too and that kind of volume is sufficient to support the logistics resupply based on our analysis so we think fear 2028 is doable. >> thank you for that testimony. mr. gerstenmeyer, i appreciated mr. posey's question of what comes next after the iss. whether it is 2020, 2028 we could lose partners. we don't know when we might lose certain partners. we have to think about what comes next and i want to follow up. can nasa provide a report to congress on its plans for road

map or of a timeline for certifying and testifying a post iss station? i understand the question was commercial and things like that and that is of interest as well but it would have to be tested and certified and nasa would have to be involved, can you provide a timeline to congress for that? >> a way we need to think about this is the next private space station, i don't believe it will be as big as the space station we have today with the international space station which it could be as small there has and discussion by space x of using their crew transportation modules called dragon lab where they can do in individual investigation, we talked to orbital about potentially using their cargo vehicle as a temporary space station in lower earth orbit. i think when we think about the private sector taking over we don't need to think about this big massive investment in the space station. they can learn what research

benefits them. it is in the pharmaceutical area, materials processing, protein crystal growth they can build a unique ability to do that, much smaller so i think the private sector can do that on their own and nasa's role is to move the human presence further and we want to go into the region around the moon so there may be habitation by the private sector for cargo in the vicinity of the moon but i king nasa's next focus is a habitation capability potentially into the vicinity of the moon. >> i yield back. >> thank you. i would like to recognize the gentleman from colorado. >> thanks mr. chairman. thank you to the panelists. good to see you. sunday's yard here after we had successes, sometimes after we have had disappointments but appreciate the fact the we keep moving forward and it is not easy. this is a risky business you all are in and we recognize that and

we don't want to have many disappointments, we want to have mostly successes and i became more comfortable in understanding the kind of oversight that goes with the contractor led investigation process, that in fact you are very involved and there has to be some kind of sign off as part of all this because oftentimes we had everybody looking over everybody else's shoulder, seems to be a pretty sensible way to approach it and i appreciate that. my questions are generally for you, dr. pawelczyk and you, ms. oakley, on what research is doing on the space station that will help us as we move forward to sending our astronauts to mars and for you so we have the research, the futurist if you

will, sitting next to the one who has to figure out how do you pay for it and what is the return? i would like to have you answer it generally how do you see the space station and fencing our goal of going to mars and i would like to ask you, miss oakley, what do you see in terms of the costs and benefits from an accountant's point of view. i turn it over to you two. >> to make sure miss oakley has time there are three issues we are dealing with here. the biological changes that we see in discontinuous reduced gravity environment, bone and muscle or are the largest, is this very energetic radiation environment that we understand to a large extent from the standpoint of solid tumors but when you look at interactions of things like effects on the brain, accelerated cardiovascular. >> is this why you have one

kelly on the space station and one kelly on the ground? >> it is. is a unique experiment because genetically they are identical and s in space give you the chance to talk about the variation that is exclusively because of a space environment and there are other behavioral issues. we are moving in the futuristic role. right now the iss works in concert with the ground. when we begin to go to interplanetary operations those crewmembers are going to be working quite autonomously from the ground, it is a matter of existence. so how people function independent of this planet will be different from how we operate today. >> bottom line is nasa does need a robust science program on the international space station to be able to achieve those longer term exploration goals. however nasa has to be able to pay for it and congress has to be able to pay for it and that

relies on a robust commercial participation in low earth orbit to do some of the things nasa needs to divert funding for the longer term exploration goals too, a so as gerstenmeyer was referring to being able to establish those markets in lower earth orbit to do some of the research that will be required to support those long duration human exploration flights is going to be essential in getting them to pay for it is also going to be essential because going to mars is expensive. >> are you comfortable with the accounting and auditing that has gone on to date on this program? the numbers? >> on the international space station program? i haven't looked specifically at the accounting associated with that. what i will say is i haven't seen cost estimates associated with extending the international space station program beyond 2020 and i think that is going to be key for the understanding of approving funding and for

everybody getting at very good understanding of what it is going to take to do the extension to do the science that is required and to do it safely. >> one more question. to mr. martin. we have had some incidents where there have been some failures. we had some schools in colorado that have had experiments on both the orbital launch and most recently the space x, they did it twice and lost both. how do we account for the cargo that is lost? is there any compensation to those people or those schools or whatever? >> there is not. on the two flights, the orbital failures lost $650,000 of cases funded experiments on those flights. the four school children in your district who lost $0.02, nasa as

mr. gerstenmeyer indicated it is gone. the taxpayers pay for them. >> thank you for your testimony and thank you for being here today and i yield back. >> thank you, sir. i would like to recognize the gentleman from california mr. knight. >> thank you, mr. chair. a couple questions, mr. gerstenmeyer, as a police officer who does investigations on accidents, we have seen a big change in our accident investigation over the last 50 years. i expect we have seen a big change in investigations of race-based problems over the last 60 years. hasn't been easy going to space in the 1960s and isn't easy today. can you give me an idea today how investigations go on how we move through the process, making sure we are hitting the points and making sure we are safer as we move through the

investigation and go quicker? the faster we can move the faster we can do more of this. >> our underpinning, we need to make sure we don't jump to conclusions or assume we know what the failure is so we do a methodical process of where we gather all the data we need to make sure time synchronization of the data is critical and that is not easy. these events occur in milliseconds so if you have a camera and time is on that make sure the time is identical to what is coming from the spacecraft, the timing of when the event, and receive the underground, gathered the data and get it synchronous, then you start the methodical process with paltry so we brainstorm, there are electronic tools

available that build the 3 for us and ask if inquisitive questions and lay out potential failures that could occur and contribute to the event, which one has to occur with another revenge and the team goes through and crosses of each of those as they move forward. what we are seeing in the case of space x is because they are a vertically integrated company they do almost all their work in house. they immediately went to testing the paltry, they prepare to go test. these short numbers of days, they are actually in the laboratory doing some stress tests. the advantage we could use tools, analysis, software we could do physical hardware tests in faster time than we did

before. >> i agree i talked to space x several times since the incident and virgin and space ship company after space of 2 went down, they were jumping on it quickly and learning things very fast and it seems the investigation process with private companies being involved is going a little faster. that is the good thing. we want to make it safer. everyone wants to make it as safe as they can and that is the truth. spaceflight still is in its infancy. we are still learning and we will be for hundreds of years yet. the faster we can get through some of these investigations the faster we can move and progress. one question for you. there was good conversation, an astronaut working today, we have one on the ground and i think we

will get good information on what effects are on the body when we send people to marcus on a long prolonged space flight. and in the next 35 years or may be shorter as charlie bolden thinks, when we are going to go to mars not just radiation but the time in space. >> i will do the best i can. >> you should note this you are a biologist. >> you have mentioned a couple of those risks in the radiation realm. what has been interesting to look at if i talk to you ten years ago would have told you i expect him to see 50% loan-loss from a human being. we thought that was essentially what gravity confirms. we had seen with implementation

strategy the we are looking at that, and will not say we have the unmitigated at this point the loading strategies are considerably better. we have seen some newly emerging risks and that is always a problem. one in particular with vision of astronauts and that is actively worked on by nasa. there has been a number of ground-based research protocols. this is a great example of how nasa quickly identified a problem. immediately engaged the scientific community to affect solutions. >> very good. i yield back. >> i want to recognize the gentleman from ohio mr. johnson. >> i am a big fan of space exploration, big buck rogers fan, star trek all those things, growing up with some as a kid if i say that jokingly but i can tell you that sitting in

my living room floor between the summer of my tenth great year watching neil armstrong and buzz aldrin landed on the moon captivated me as it did the rest of the world's. i have never gotten over that. i have tremendous respect for what you folks do and the discoveries we are making through space exploration process. mr. gerstenmeyer, one question for you to start off with. the iss has not been extended by congress. however the administration has proposed to extend to 2024. how many international partners have agreed to extension and what steps is nasa taking to build a coalition of our international partners for an extension? >> the canadian space agency has agreed to extend to 2024 so we

have one partner, the canadian space agency doing a lot of robotic activities and have the robotic equipment on board station. described earlier the russians by the end of this year could be on board with extension in 2024. the japanese are also actively looking at station extension, they could do that again probably by the end of this year, possibly by the start of the next fiscal year in april of 2016 and the japanese are actively working that and we are working with them and the european space agency, again working through the overall budget process, they have committed to support us on the orion capsules. teams in ohio are working on the european service model that sits underneath the orion capital. they are pretty much committed, they are not committed to station yet. they will do that in 2017 formally but they are doing all the activities of getting with all the members states and member countries to approved and facing tremendous benefit, just

working through the government process. partners are heading towards station extension in 2024 and the varying timeframe. >> a quick follow-up. how significant of a partner are the russians? we are pretty dependent on the russians right now in terms of getting there and back. >> we are dependent upon them for crude transportation. we use them for attitude, and altitude adjustments of space station. they provide that and are dependent on us for a solar array of power generation and use us for command and other activities so we are mutually dependent back-and-forth. >> are you having any discussions? i am sure you heard the testimony of potential incoming chairman of the joint chiefs

that the russians of the biggest security risks, security threat? we are kind of in it dichotomy with the russians. are you concerned about that? and what is your backup plan? >> from a civil space standpoint as i described earlier we have a strong relationship with the russians and we will continue to do that. lean need to look at what happens if the russians pull out in certain key areas as we look at the commercial crew program we want to end our reliance on the crew transportation system as soon as we can and funding is critical to get it in place so we can have u.s. capability to augment the russians in december or 2017 time frame. we are moving out on crude transportation. the other areas i describes where we are dependent we have worked arounds, we can put systems in place to recruit that if we have to.

is and that changes to cooperate, there are real live advantages, that is the right way to go forward, these endeavors require all the work together but we need to be not so naive that if a problem occurs we can't continue go on without a certain part. >> we have had some failures with commercial avenue. i certainly, i am sure you are but i hope there is a lot of discussion going on because if we continue to experience similar failures like we had with the commercial cargo program, and the russians were to back out our options become smaller and fewer. mr. chairman, i yield back. >> thank you. i would like to recognize the

gentleman from california. >> thank you very much, mr. chairman. i remember when the space station was first approved one by one vote in this committee, one vote. don't disappoint me. don't disappoint me now. does anyone here know the level of co2 that is in the atmosphere of the space station? do you have an internal atmosphere -- what element do we put -- a lot of talk about co2 in the planet now. what does ceo to do in the space station? >> we have been holding it low because of potential eye

problems. we are running about 3 millimeters of mercury of partial pressure of ceo 2 on board station. >> how does that compare to co2 in our atmosphere? >> slightly higher than the atmosphere we have in the room here. we typically allow prior to the intracranial pressure problems associated with position, we allow it to go up on the order of 6 or so mm for mercury. that is dramatically higher than the environment here. slightly higher co2 levels on station and we see here. >> have there been any health-related problems in this increased level of co2 that astronauts breathed in during their time on the space station compared to what they would freeze in here? >> we are not sure but it could contribute to intracranial pressure problem which causes

the eye and vision problems we described. higher elevated levels you could get headaches, you could have some other physiological problems and again we try to control that as well as we can. we have a russian device that removes carbon dioxide, we have a you as a device that removes carbon dioxide and some absorbent material the also removes it and we have a next-generation system that will fly on the orion capital that is also on board station and we can use that also. >> we are actually exhaling ceo to all the time so we have to be if you are enclosed environment be very concerned with what the human body is exhaling. in terms of the future of space station, do we have plans to expand, put different elements onto the space station at this point? >> currently on the u.s. side

reconfigured the permanent multi-purpose module from one location to another location to make sure there's room for docking adaptor to let commercial vehicles come. that is all we are going to do on the u.s. side. there are no major new editions coming this the russians talk about a solar power platform to provide some solar energy for their segment. the russians have talked about multipurpose logistics' module another research module they may at to station. may add additional modules but we on the u.s. i don't have additional major additions. >> the bigelow co. has invested a considerable amount of money in developing a new concept for space habitats, the inflatables. is there any use of this technology? >> it will be added to space station next year as a demonstration capability. this is and expandable modules added to the outside, it will

stay for a year-and-a-half and we will remove it from station. it purpose is to investigate the advantages of an expandable model so instead of a rigid pressure shell it is to understand what we can gain from the expandable technology. it has thick walls and may be better for my craw meteoroid debris penetration standpoint and it may be better family that needs to be looked at in the acoustic environment may be better. the idea is to get it in orbit, test them on orbit with space station, unique capabilities to confirm if that module technology is something we want to use. >> might also be cheaper than the traditional way of building a space station. which is something which should be concerned about. orbital debris continues to be and always was an expanding concern. i believe this is something nasa

should look at not just in terms of space station but we should be thinking about international cooperative effort to deal with the debris problem. this committee should be dealing with at least in the time ahead and second and last of all let me just note that your report on your cooperation with russia during this time period when there are frictions going on between the united states and russia, and i think demonstrates a very wonderful aspect of space and that this once you get up there you look back down on the earth and some of those problems don't seem as important. you are able to put it in perspective and i am happy to hear we are and the russians are putting these areas of friction in perspective to the point that

we can work together and create a better world while we are doing it. thank you very much for demonstrating that to all of us. >> thank you. we just had votes called. i think the witnesses for their valuable testimony and members for their questions. and the second rounds. for additional comments and written questions from members and is our hope the office of management and budget will work more expeditiously with nasa, the committee is waiting for nasa's responses to questions for the commercial crew hearing from six months ago. mr. gerstenmeyer, send back the message these delays are not acceptable. witnesses are excused and this hearing is adjourned.

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[inaudible conversations] .. >> radio talk show host hugh hewitt weighs in on