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Show NASA Director Outlines University Role In Space Says U.S. Space Program Will Benefit 6 All Mankind5 Ey SANDRA TELFORD Chronicle Political Editor XUe role of the university in space exploration and research, was . the topic of James E. Webb, administrator of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Thursday night in the Union Ballroom. MR. WEBB said NASA initiated a program in 1962 to train graduate grad-uate students in space aeronautics. At first 88 colleges around the country participated but by the beginning of next year, Mr. Webb said there will be 123 colleges participating among which three are Brigham Young University Utah State University and the University of Utah. "Our most trusted sources," 'Mr. Webb said, "are in universities. In fact," he said, "there was not a single university that applied for a grant that did not receive one." . SPEAKING WITH a slight southern drawl, the native North Carolinian Caro-linian said many of the space experiments conceived by NASA were the work of university graduate students engaged in NASA work Mr. Webb said one of the experiments the University of Utah would be doing has to do with solar energy. . j NASA he said has also aided industry. Mr. Webb said it has just recently put two billion dollars into building the most complex system of space instruments ever built and has also asked the same companies that are building the instruments to test them for an additional two billion dollars. MR. WEBB said NASA's research will have the United States an enormous amount of money. He said already the U.S. is saving money by orbiting the weather stations, and soon will save more with space communications. In all for the decade, 1960-70, the United States will spend 35 billion bil-lion dollars for the NASA project, and according to Mr. Webb, "not a penny has been lost." Project NASA, he said is for "science of all mankind." TWENTY BILLION dollars of that 35 serves not only to place a man into flight but also to discover dis-cover new space instruments, and stronger materials, the administrator administra-tor said. Mercury, Gemini and Ap-polo Ap-polo are three of the projects to set a man onto the moon before "this decade is over." NASA benefits, he said, do not iust include the industry but provide pro-vide national security, practical benefits such as weather and communication com-munication stations, and can prove to the other nations of the world that a democratic nation can push forward at great speed just as a totalitarian nation can. |