Soviet Space Cooperation in Human Rights and Scientific Exchanges
IMPORTANCE OF EXCHANGES
Mutual enrichment
Not quite so dramatic as Kosmos 954 but nonetheless effective in internationalizing an important problem in Soviet-American relations was the impact of Soviet violations of human rights on the international exchange of scientists. That such scientific exchanges have a connection with and thus an impact upon the space sciences
Igor Morokhov, First Vice-Chairman of the Soviet Atomic Energy Committee, published an article in New Times in July 1978 (No. 27, pp. 26-28) coinciding with the June 26 meeting of the UNCOPUOS that had nuclear power sources in outer space as one item on its agenda. The article explored the many uses of nuclear energy; underscored Soviet safety measures, noting in the case of Kosmos 954 that "Irradiation from the fragments that reached the ground presented no danger to either the population or environment"; and pointed out that "provision is now being made for double safeguards, which should completely rule out any release of radiation from nuclear installations in space devices." Morokhov concluded with a restatement of the Soviet commitment to space cooperation: "Our country attaches the greatest importance to international cooperation under United Nations auspices in the use of nuclear energy in outer space. The value of such co-operation was fully demonstrated by the Cosmos-954 incident. It is to be hoped that the U.N. Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space will draw up relevant recommendations."
Dr. Robert Greenberg of the Department of Defense explained the U.S. view on the use of nuclear powered reactors in space in an appearance with Dr. Perry before the Senate Subcommittee on Science, Technology, and Space. Greenberg explained that the United States did not use nuclear reactors but radioisotope sources on some U.S. satellites. Seven such DOD satellites were then in orbit using radioisotope generators. "We have no plans to use nuclear reactors in space at this time," he said, "although we think that there is a possibility of using them sometime in the future, as we need more power and perhaps want to increase the survivability of our satellites." Asked if the Kosmos 954 incident affected their thinking, Greenberg replied: "We have considered it pretty carefully. . . . We would not propose to put a nuclear reactor in low Earth orbit, where it would be dangerous, unless we were sure there were a multitude of adequate safeguards to insure that its reentry would be safe." U.S. policy would never have permitted the orbit of Kosmos 954 for an operational reactor. To do so, Dr. Perry interjected, "is completely contrary to the policy under which we would use a reactor in space. They had it operating as a nuclear reactor, while it was in a low Earth orbit, with the idea they were going to boost it to a high Earth orbit afterward." Perry concluded: "That, in itself, is certainly not a fail-safe way of proceeding, as was demonstrated." (Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee, Hearings, NASA Authorization for Fiscal Year 1979, 1978, pt. 3, p. 995.)
is self-evident. For it is believed that the international exchange of scientists enhances the value of science generally, and the space sciences specifically: By encouraging the cross-fertilization of ideas; by stimulating the growth of science as a whole; and by contributing to the unity of the world scientific community.
Impact of detente
Detente in political relations stimulated detente in scientific relations. The easing of tensions in the political realm increasingly held open greater prospects for interaction between the Soviet and American scientific communities. Dr. Bruce Murray, formerly a scientist with the Division of Geological and Planetary Sciences at the California Institute of Technology, and now Director of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Mr. Merton E. Davies, senior staff member of the Physical Sciences Department at Rand Corp., concluded a survey of prospects for space cooperation in a period of political detente on this optimistic note:
* * * we wish to reiterate that person-to-person relations between Soviet and U.S. scientists must be fostered if there is to be the true scientific flowering that can and should accompany detente. Progress must be made toward more intercommunication and openness if detente is to be meaningful to American scientists. The rate of progress in space science may well be dependent on the political fortunes of detente on Earth. (3)
Soviet scientists were also hopeful that fruitful cooperation with their American counterparts would continue as detente flourished. This hope was reflected in a statement prepared by a panel of Soviet scientists and published in Pravda on April 23, 1979. In an apparent effort to divert U.S. criticism of Soviet violations of the human rights of Soviet scientists, they stressed the positive side of Soviet-American scientific cooperation, citing it as a force for peace and progress in science:
The Soviet Union and the U.S. have very powerful scientific potentials, and successes of science in our countries are exercising a tremendous influence on scientific and technical progress in the world. The constant strengthening and expansion of our scientific ties facilitate the creation of a climate of mutual understanding and trust * * *.
Scientists have a prominent and honorable place in society. Their prestige and contributions to the economic and cultural development of their countries and to the improvement of the international situation are quite weighty. They can and must use their influence for promoting mutual understanding among peoples, deepening the process of detente, and seeing to it that scientific and technical advance is directed toward the good of peoples, toward the solution of mankind's pressing problems. (4)
OBSTACLE TO COOPERATION: INEQUITY OF SCIENTIFIC EXCHANGES
There were, however, obstacles to cooperation in scientific exchanges, and they centered essentially on two points: (1) the inequity in exchanges, to the U.S. disadvantage; and (2) the impact of the human rights issue on Soviet-American relations.
Debate on the quality of Soviet science and scientists was quickened by reassessment of international exchanges in light of Soviet violations of the human rights of their scientists. Briefly, American scientists placed a high value only on certain areas of Soviet science, pointing to the plague of bureaucratic political control as being largely responsible for impairing its advance. That U.S. science was preeminent, there was no doubt. Hence in many ways the exchanges in areas of the hard sciences were uneven. As the Board on International Scientific Exchange of the National Academy of Science concluded in its 2-year assessment published in 1977: "* * * the United States has, on the whole, been teaching the Soviets more than we are learning from them." (5)
Inequity in the exchanges, to the U.S. disadvantage, proved to be, therefore, an important obstacle to expanding scientific cooperation.
OBSTACLE TO COOPERATION: SOVIET HUMAN EIGHTS VIOLATIONS
Systemic incompatibility as cause
But Soviet violations of the human rights of their scientists proved to be the most formidable obstacle to cooperation in the sciences—cooperation, that is, not so much at the government-to-government level as noted above as in those exchanges involving Soviet and American scientific institutions and individual scientists.
Causes for the conflict over human rights can be reduced simply to systemic incompatibility. As explained in chapter 2, the Soviets and Americans view human rights from politically and philosophically polar opposite perspectives. Special emphasis placed on human rights in the Carter administration inevitably found its primary target in the Soviet Union.
The Soviets, resenting what they termed intrusion into their internal affairs, reacted vigorously against the U.S. campaign. In Soviet efforts to restrict Jewish emigration, allegedly for security reasons since scientists worked with classified information, many Soviet scientists of Jewish heritage became victims of repressive Soviet measures. Non-Jewish scientists such as Andrei Sakharov also suffered in a parallel Soviet attempt to stamp out political dissidence. And since Soviet scientists appeared to be one of the principal Soviet targets, the American scientific community came to their defense, with serious adverse results for cooperative programs including the exchange of scientists. Peaking of protests with Orlov and Scharansky, 1978-79
The arrest, trial, and harsh sentencing of two Soviet dissident scientists, physicist Yuri F. Orlov and computer scientist Anatoli Scharansky, in 1978 led to an outpouring of protests from the U.S. scientific community as well as the U.S. Government. These harsh repressive measures caused severe strain in Soviet-American scientific relations.
Among other acts of protest was the cancellation of many scientific conferences in the wake of the convictions of the Soviet scientists. Perhaps Dr. Philip Handler, President of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, best expressed the mood of the American scientific community in a formal statement. He said that the Academy had told the Soviet Academy of Sciences on the occasion of canceling a conference in May 1978 that "the issue of human rights threatens to erode the willingness of American scientists to cooperate with their Soviet counterparts." (6)
The protests seemed to peak in March 1979. Under the leadership of the ad hoc committee called, "Scientists for Orlov and Sharansky", or by its acronym "SOS", more than 2,400 American scientists and engineers including 13 Noble laureates pledged in a "statement of conscience" to restrict severely or end their scientific cooperation with the Soviet Union until Orlov and Scharansky were released. At a press conference in Washington, spokesmen for the group, including Nobel Chemistry Laureate Paul J. Flory, denounced the "unjust trials and harsh sentencing" of the Soviet scientists and human rights activitists and expressed SOS's further concern about Soviet scientists suffering for their human rights activities or their desire to emigrate. "And our concern goes beyond," said Flory, to the general treatment of Soviet scientists. The Soviets "have made a mockery of international scientific cooperation," he said, with political criteria for selecting scientists to travel abroad and political restraints on communication with U.S. scientists. (7)
But this action did not mean the complete closing of the door on cooperation. According to Dr. Kurt Gottfried, a physicist at Cornell University, about 70 percent of the 2,400 signatories subscribed to the "statement of conscience." The remainder were not willing to foreclose participation in existing exchanges. But they signed a declaration of principle pledging not to attend international conferences in the Soviet Union, to oppose enlargement of Soviet-American exchange programs, and to campaign against the transfer of sophisticated technology and granting of most-favored-nation status to the Soviet Union. SOS did not advocate that all scientists break scientific ties with the Soviet Union nor that the U.S. Government cut off exchange programs. Rather it supported a spectrum of responses. (8)
Ambivalence of response
The response of the American scientific community to the Orlov Scharansky case was thus somewhat ambivalent. On the one hand, five Nobel laureates could send a statement to Pravda on July 12, 1979, in rebuttal to the article by Soviet scientists in Pravda of April 23, in which they categorically warned:
Formal agreements on scientific cooperation are doomed to failure if leading scientists choose not to participate. If the Soviet Government is genuinely eager to cultivate scientific ties and to engage the cooperation of scientists in the world at large, it must foster a climate free of political, ethnic, and racial prejudice and persecution. (9)
But others could take a more moderating view, as in the case of the unidentified American space scientist who said on the occasion of canceling the conference of physicists in Moscow during the summer of 1978, "We want to keep as many doors open between the two countries as we can." (10)
Much the same tone of moderation was evident in the editorial on Soviet-American scientific relationships by Philip H. Abelson in Science. Abelson evaluated Soviet science; pointed out the short-comings of the Russians at international meetings and the advantages of bilateral exchanges where their "record is better;" and arrived at this even-handed conclusion:
It is in our national interest to continue to have interactions with the scientists of the Soviet Union. But the time has come to conduct the relationship on a tough-minded basis. In the process, though, we should remember that some sanctions may injure well-meaning scientists far more than they irritate the Kremlin. (11)
This even-handed, moderate approach to science cooperation with the Soviets had been expressed officially in the 2-year study on Soviet-American scientific exchanges that was prepared by a panel of U.S. scientists and published in 1977. The report acknowledged that "discrimination against Jewish scientists is a particularly sensitive issue, and one which has caused some American scientists to cut off relations with their Soviet counterparts." But on balance, the report said, "the majority of American scientists believe the exchanges should continue despite their disapproval of Soviet discrimination." According to the panel of scientists, "the majority opinion is that Soviet isolation from Western contacts would lead to the worst possible fate for Soviet dissidents." The panel further believed that "maintenance of the exchange will do more to increase the freedom of scientists in the Soviet Union than cutting it off or reducing it substantially would do." (12)
The formal response of Soviet scientists to the "statement of conscience" by their American counterparts was defensive, polemical; but still it struck a positive note by wanting to maintain scientific cooperation. (13)
HUMAN RIGHTS: A DURABLE PROBLEM
However ambivalent the response of American scientists to Soviet violations of the human rights of their scientists, and however moderating the formal Soviet reply may seem, the fact remains that the Orlov-Scharansky case exposed a central problem in U.S. scientific cooperation with the Soviet Union; namely, the problem of human rights from perspectives in conflict. And what is more, this is a durable problem, because it is rooted in the systemic incompatibility of beliefs on human rights and freedom of thought, beliefs that go to the heart of the American approach to science. (14)
U.S. SPACE COOPERATION WITH CHINA: THE SOVIET FACTOR
BROADENING RELATIONS WITH CHINA AS A U.S. PRIORITY
In order of priority the further broadening of relations with China was perhaps third to the conclusion of SALT II with the Soviet Union and the pursuit of human rights in the Carter administration's foreign policy. Space cooperation was an important aspect of U.S. relations with China, and in pursuing space diplomacy the Soviet factor inevitably entered in. In this case the United States was cautiously playing the so-called " China card," using space cooperation, along with other political, cultural, and scientific agreements, as instruments of pressure against the Russians in a carefully constructed balance of power.
LINKAGE THROUGH COMMUNICATIONS SATELLITES
Early Chinese interest
Communications became the mechanism for establishing and expanding Sino-American space relations. The visit of President Richard M. Nixon to China in February 1972 made it necessary to establish a temporary satellite communications Earth station in
China. The purpose was to maintain a continuous communications link between the President and U.S. military and civilian organizations, and to transmit international television and press coverage of the visit. (15)
Subsequent Chinese interest
Agreement on Chinese communications satellite, 1979
Chinese interest in a communications satellite system quickened in 1978. During the visit of an American scientific group in July headed by Dr. Frank Press, White House Science Adviser, exploratory talks were held, initiated by the Chinese, on the possibility of the United States building and launching a domestic communications satellite. (17)
During November 28, 1978-January 13, 1979, a Chinese space delegation headed by Dr. Jen Hsin-min, director of the China Space Technology Research Institute, visited the United States. An Understanding on Cooperation in Space Technology was reached which stated China's intent to purchase from U.S. industry, under suitable conditions, a satellite broadcasting and communications system, including associated ground receiving and distribution equipment. The satellites would be launched by NASA, according to this agreement, and placed in geostationary orbit by a U.S. contractor, with continued operation to be carried out by China. The Chinese also expressed the intention, again under suitable conditions, of purchasing from U.S. industry a Landsat ground station. (18)
Negotiations on this space agreement were carried on against the background of two important events: On January 1, 1979, the United States and China established formal diplomatic relations-and on January 28, Vice Premier Deng Xiaoping began a 9-day state visit to the United States, including Houston, the space center, aimed at solidifying the newly established diplomatic relations. On January 31, Vice Premier Deng and President Carter signed a series of agreements establishing consulates and creating the basis for extensive undertakings in cultural and scientific affairs. The understanding on space cooperation was attached to the Agreement on Cooperation in Science and Technology. (19) On this occasion President Carter said that the new agreements established a new and irreversible course" in Sino-American relations. Vice Premier Deng praised the agreements as "significant" and noted that this is not the end but just a beginning." He added: "There are many more areas of bilateral cooperation and more channels waiting for us to develop." (20)
This was the case with space cooperation. The only areas then under discussion were those enumerated in the January 31 Memorandum of Understanding; but, as Dr. Frosch noted, "Once these are underway . . . there may be further peaceful space activities and cooperative relationships that would be appropriate." (21)
Without delay the Chinese made contact with American firms to undertake specific negotiations. (22)
After the International Telecommunications Exposition, Intelcom 1979 in Dallas during March 1979, Chinese telecommunications executives and technicians conferred with technical and marketing personnel of U.S. and foreign companies and visited telecommunications manufacturing facilities in the Dallas/Ft. Worth area. According to Department of Commerce officials escorting the Chinese, after the group completed its tour and digested the information collected, selected companies would be requested to furnish additional data and then be invited to Beijing for negotiations. (23)
In May, Dr. Frosch headed a 13-member delegation of U.S. space officials on a visit to China to discuss cooperative projects between the two countries, including the purchase and establishment of the civil commmunications satellite system. Mr. Richard J. H. Barnes, Deputy Director of NASA's Office on International Affairs, indicated what lay ahead when he remarked: "There's an awful lot of commerical and governmental negotiations to be done before this is completed." Meanwhile, NASA, in anticipation of a contract to orbit a Chinese civil satellite communications network, tentatively scheduled cargo space on two Space Shuttle flights in 1982. (24)
Discussions continued between NASA officials and the newly formed Chinese Communications Satellite Corporation on requirements for the broadcasting and communications satellite, including associated ground receiving equipment which the Chinese assured would be procured from U.S. industry. Upon Dr. Frosch's return from his visit to Beijing, NASA transmitted Chinese invitations to several American space firms to visit Beijing for exploratory discussions. These discussions were undertaken in February 1980. (25)
Apparently little more has been achieved; in fact, the Chinese now say that they will launch their own satellite in 1984.
CHINESE INTEREST IN LANDSAT
Communications was not the only space activity that attracted the Chinese. Landsat captured their interest, and, accordingly, in parallel negotiations for a communications satellite network, they discussed its utility with NASA officials. In December 1978, an agreement was reached in principle for the Chinese to establish a Landsat ground station purchased from the United States. (26)
Negotiations went forward in 1979 with officials of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.27 And after "working steadily" with their counterpart agencies, as Pedersen described the negotiations in February 1980, NASA and the Chinese Academy of Sciences concluded a Memorandum of Understanding on January 24, 1980, governing Chinese participation in the Landsat remote sensing program. According to the MOU, the Chinese would procure from U.S.
industry, subject to export control regulations, a ground station to receive data from NASA's Landsat-D satellite. (28)
VALUE OF SPACE COOPERATION WITH CHINA AND THE SOVIET FACTOR
There seems little doubt that China and the United States have benefited from their space cooperation. While both benefited politically, the Chinese benefited far more in space technology. From a technical and scientific perspective, Dr. Louis D. Friedman a congressional fellow sponsored by the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics placed a high value on such cooperation and expressed a favorable view in line with that of other specialists in the space field. In testimony before the Senate Subcommittee on Science, Technology, and Space, Dr. Friedman made the following all inclusive appraisal:
We also undertake activities on our own aimed at improving the global climate in space. I would like to cite as an example an AIAA recent trip to the People's Republic of China to exchange information on satellite communications and remote sensing from space, a visit which we believe has been of considerable value to both the United States and to the furtherance of international cooperation.
A great deal of science and technical information was exchanged, and the door was opened to U.S. industry to provide a set of communications satellites and Earth stations for the Chinese domestic system. (29)
In the political sphere space cooperation played an important role: It helped to solidify the close relationship then emerging between the PRC and the United States. It also contributed to the evolving American policy of playing the Chinese off against the Russians in a delicate balance of power in global politics; that is, "playing the China card," though this was formally denied.
But the United States, then in the final stages of concluding SALT II, became somewhat apprehensive lest Soviet-American relations deteriorate still further—the Soviet response to the normalization of Sino-American relations and visit of Vice Premier Deng Xiaoping to Washington in January 1979 was to further delay the summit and the signing of SALT II.
The human rights issue had already cast a pall over the relationship. In July 1978, the United States postponed a visit to Moscow by Dr. Press in protest of the Soviet campaign against Soviet dissidents notably Orlov and Scharansky, and the harassment of American businessmen and journalists. (Recall that Press then led a U.S. scientific delegation to Beijing.) The freeze was kept on scientific and technical exchanges for the next 6 months.
To forestall further deterioration in relations that might threaten the Summit and SALT, the administration decided on January 23, 1979 to reinstate the Press scientific mission to Moscow. Press was cochairman of the joint Soviet-American commission on scientific cooperation. The purpose of the trip was to review the effectiveness of the Soviet-American exchange in scientific areas and explore new areas of potential cooperation.
In this way, therefore, the Soviet factor made its impact on U.S. space relations with China. As one U.S. official said referring to the reinstitution of the Press visit to Moscow, "Let's just say it's part of our effort to be even-handed, or at least not to appear to be tilting toward Peking." (30)
References:
A. SOVIET SPACE PROGRAMS: 1976-80, SUPPORTING VEHICLES AND LAUNCH VEHICLES, POLITICAL GOALS AND PURPOSES, INTERNATIONAL COOPERATION IN SPACE, ADMINISTRATION, RE-SOURCE BURDEN, FUTURE OUTLOOK PREPARED AT THE REQUEST OF HON. BOB PACKWOOD, Chairman, COMMITTEE ON COMMERCE, SCIENCE, AND TRANSPORTATION, UNITED STATES SENATE, Part 1, Dec. 1982.
3. Murray, Bruce and Merton E. Davies. Detente in Space. Science, vol. 192, June 11, 1976:1074.
4. Scientific Cooperation and Human Rights: An East-West Exchange of Views. Chemical & Engineering News, vol. 57, Aug. 27, 1979:31-32. The following scientists prepared this statement: Academician Yu. Ovchinnikov, Vice President of the Soviet Academy of Sciences; Academician Ye. Velikhov, Vice President of the Soviet Academy of Sciences; Academician G. Skryabin, Chief Learned Secretary of the Soviet Academy of Sciences; Academicians L. Brekhovskikh and N. Emanuel.
5. Quoted in, Cowen, Robert C. Science Swap: Just Politics to Russia. The Christian Science Monitor, Nov. 23, 1977, p. 35.
6. Facts-on-File, June 2, 1978, p. 401E1.
7. U.S. Scientists to Cut Ties with Soviets. Chemical & Engineering News, vol. 57, Mar. 12, 1979:6.
8. Ibid.
9. Scientific Ties and Human Rights. Chemical & Engineering News, vol. 57, Aug. 27, 1979:32.
10. The statement was made as American space officials were about to leave for Europe to confer with the Soviets in Innsbruck, Austria. The U.S. delegation was seeking an agreement with their Soviet counterparts in which American scientific instruments would be flown in an unmanned Soviet spacecraft put into orbit around the Moon. Hence the importance of keeping the door of cooperation open; as that scientist added, "This agreement to fly to the Moon together is one of our best chances to do that." (O'Toole, Thomas. U.S. Seeks Role in Soviet Moon Flight. The Washington Post, May 29, 1978, p. A2.)
11. Abelson, Philip H. United States-Soviet Scientific Relationships. Science, vol. 201, Sept. 29, 1978:1175.
12. Gwertzman, Bernard. Science Academy Defends Exchanges with Soviet. The New York Times, Oct. 12, 1977, p. A5.
13. Chemical & Engineering News, vol. 57, Aug. 27, 1979:30-32.
14. For a review of this conflict over human rights and its impact on scientific exchanges, see, Walsh, John. Local Options Affects U.S.-Soviet Exchanges: American Participation Depends on Choices by Individuals and Some Are Opting Out on Human Rights, Other Issues. Science, vol. 205, Aug. 31, 1979:875-878.
15. Sheldon, Charles S. II. People's Republic of China. House Science and Technology Committee, World-Wide Space Activities, 1977, p. 215.
16. Ibid., p. 216.
17. Wemrub Bernard. U.S. Agrees to Provide Chinese a Key Communications Satellite. The Washington Star Oct. 31, 1978 p A3 and Toth, Robert C. U.S. Reportedly Discusses Sale, Laanch 0{ Satellite for China. The Washington Post, Oct. 4, 1978, pp. Al and A16
18. Questions and answers, Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee Hearings, NASA Authorization for Fiscal Year 1980, 1979, pt. 2, p. 936. For a copy of the understanding, see part 3 of these hearings, pp. 1671-1672.
Asked to explain what "under suitable conditions" meant, Arnold Frutkin explained- "It's a statement of intent by China to purchase the satellites and launchings, and so on, 'under suitable conditions and I think this clearly means that the terms of commercial contracts have to be satisfactory to China before they will commit to those purchases." Frutkin informed the committee at that China negotiated “somewhat similar arrangements" in Germany and France (Pt 3.,p. l653.)
19. Ibid., pt. 2, p. 936.
20. Facts-on-File, Jan. 26, 1976, pp. 65A1-AG.
21. Questions and answers, Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee, Hearings, NASA Authorization for Fiscal Year 1980, 1979, pt. 2, p. 936.
22. Statement of Frutkin, Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee Hearings, NASA Authorization Fiscal Year 1980, 1979, pt. 3, p. 1653.
23. Chinese Tour U.S. Telecommunications Plants. Aviation Week & Space Technology, vol. 110, Mar. 26, 1979:53.
24. Sulzberger, A. 0. NASA Awaits China Decision on Space Flights in 1982. The New York Times, May 18, 1979, p. A13.
25. Statement of Pedersen, Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee, Hearings, NASA Authorization for Fiscal Year 1981, 1980, pt. 3, p. 1651.
26. Statement of Frosch, Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee, Hearings, NASA Authorization for Fiscal Year 1980, 1979, pt. 2, p. 875. See also, pt. 1, pp. 540-541. Several other countries also have these ground stations.
27. Highlights of 1979, NASA News, Dec. 27, 1979, Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee, Hearings, NASA Authorization for Fiscal Year 1981, 1980, pt. 2, pp. 817-818.
28. Statement of Pedersen, Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee, Hearings, NASA Authorization for Fiscal Year 1981, 1980, pt. 3, p. 1651. For the text of the MOU, see pt. 2 of these hearings, pp. 1047-1049.
The importance of Landsat data to China was evident in the statement of Secretary of the Interior Cecil D. Andrus on international cooperation in fuels and minerals exploration: "G. B. Bailey, and P. D. Anderson (Technicolor Graphic Services, Inc.) and D. G. Orr (Geological Survey), participated in cooperative scientific exchange recently initiated between the Survey and the Peoples Republic of China Scientific Research Institute for Petroleum Exploration and Development. They reported that geologic interpretations based on analyses of standard and enhanced Landsat data acquired over the major portion of China's Tsaidam Basin resulted in the production of a geological structure map with an accuracy (75 to 80 percent) which compared very favorably with a geologic map compiled from ground sources during the past 20 years. The detail of the two maps is also very comparable. The analytic and interpretive work resulting in the Lansat-data derived map was accomplished in approximately 2 man-weeks of time. This accomplishment has great significance for petroleum exploration in this and other remote parts of the world." (Ibid., pt. 3, pp. 1497-1498.)
29. Statement of Friedman, Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee, Hearings, NASA Authorization for Fiscal Year 1981, 1980, pt. 3, p. 1616.
For an extensive and positive evaluation of Chinese and American space cooperation in communications satellites, see statements of Augustine and Edelson, House Science and Technology Committee, 1981 NASA Authorization, 1980, vol. 5, pp. 2189-2192. Both are officials with the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics. Special emphasis was placed on the interaction with the Chinese on technical and scientific matters, surprise at the advanced state-of-the-art in China, and the great commercial opportunities for the United States in space cooperation with China.
30. Beecher, William. The Boston Globe, Jan. 25, 1979, p. 10, and Goshko, John M. U.S. Science Delegation Reschedules Moscow Trip. The Washington Post, Jan. 24, 1979, p. A18.
