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Recent exploratory research by The World Bank indicates that human resources (hr) constitute ~ 64% of the ~ $86,000 per person of average world wealth. Human labor and especially human skills outweigh produced assets (pa - 16%) and natural resources (nr - 20%).1 Even though the average United States citizen is much wealthier, $421,000 per person, than the average world citizen, the United States distribution of wealth (hr ~ 59%, pa ~ 16%, nr ~ 25%) is similar to that of the world average. By comparison, Japan, at $565,000 per person, is much richer in human capital but much poorer in resources (hr ~ 81%, pa ~ 18%, nr ~ 2%); Australia, with a small number of people and many natural resources, possesses $835,000 per person (hr ~ 21%, pa ~ 7%, nr ~ 71%).
Houston's economy is diverse, high in technology, but resource intensive (energy, energy services and manufacturing, petrochemical ~60%; medical centers ~ 10%; NASA-JSC ~5%; others ~25%)2. It yields approximately one-fifth the gross product of Texas. Houston and Texas are transitioning from being exceedingly rich in natural resources, like Australia, toward the United States averages. Over the long term, the national, Texas, and Houston economies will trend toward the Japanese averages in which human resources, the skills of the humans and their social organization, totally dominate natural resources and produced assets. Dallas/Fort Worth and Austin have clearly gained economically in human resources from government expenditures for defense systems, commercial electronics, and the new human skills created in the University of Texas-Austin, -Dallas, and -Arlington, TCU, SMU, and North Texas.
The purpose of the Institute for Space Systems Operations (ISSO) is to increase the human resources of UH, UHCL, Houston, and Texas in advanced aerospace research, development, and education. Aerospace is used inclusively. It includes advanced energy systems, the life- and medical-sciences, fundamental and applied engineering skills, operation of advanced systems, international business, and the exploitation of lunar and space resources but is not limited to these.
To stimulate the growth of Texans' human resources, the State expends more than $250,000,000 each year on research and applications within its many universities and medical centers. Completely separately, the NASA-Johnson Space Center spends approximately $250,000,000 each year on R&D. NASA-JSC has directly contributed over the years to the economic growth of Silicon Valley and to Route 128 around Boston by research contracts to area companies, Stanford University, MIT/Draper Laboratories, and others for solid state computers, software, high technology systems, research, and analyses.
A major ISSO objective is to increase the linkage of the vast R&D activities of NASA-JSC to UH, UHCL, Houston, and Texas. A second objective is to assist UH, UHCL, Houston, and TSGC universities to evolve their educational programs to take full advantages of the advanced educational needs and capacities of the NASA-JSC community. Achieving these goals will provide Texans with superb new capabilities in science, engineering, the operation of high-technology systems, and international business and cultural relations. All will clearly add to the advanced human resources of Houston, Texas, and the nation.
1I. Serageldin, "Sustainability and the Wealth of Nations," Third Annual
World Bank Conf. on Environmentally Sustainable Development., 27pp and two appendices,
Washington, D.C. (discussion draft, 30 Sept. 1995).
2W. Gilbert, "Houston Business: A Perspective on the Houston Economy," Federal
Reserve of Dallas, Houston Branch, May 1995.
This Biennial Report describes the third and fourth year of research projects conducted by UH and UHCL faculty under ISSO seed-level funding. The projects were peer reviewed and selected for their research value, educational value to graduate students, and potential for leading to externally funded programs and/or commercial utility. ISSO investigators obtained more than $1.3 million of external funding in fiscal year 1994. That corresponds to 6 to 1 leveraging of State line item funds. In addition, ISSO has enabled UH professors to be more competitive in the NASA-JSC Regional Universities Grants program. As a partner in the Texas Space Grant Consortium, ISSO organized a proposal to NASA for a multi-university center for research in closed environmental life support systems. UH, UT-Austin, and TAMU professors participated. ISSO worked with the University of New Mexico to organize and conduct the international conference on Alternative Power from Space (January, 1995). ISSO also convened seminars on research and supported participation by faculty in local, state, national, and international conferences and workshops.
ISSO is constructing stronger working ties between NASA-JSC and UH, UHCL, and Texas. The approach is to develop joint research teams between UH and UHCL faculty and R&D staff of the NASA-Johnson Space Center. Planned research projects will focus on topics that are important to the long-range exploration and/or exploitation of space as seen from the NASA-JSC perspective, research of academic value at the post-graduate level, and, in selected cases, of arguable commercial value. The effort is recognized as the UH-JSC Post-Doctoral Aerospace Fellowship Program. Post-doctoral research projects will enable NASA-JSC to increase the productivity of their R&D expenditures and enable UH, UHCL, and Texas to greatly increase their research output for minimal expenditures of State funds.
In both 1994 and 1995, ISSO enabled over 25 graduate and undergraduate students, through stipends, to conduct research and obtain degrees under the direction of faculty at UH and UH Clear Lake.
ISSO worked with faculty and staff of UH, UHCL, NASA-JSC, and aerospace firms to determine the graduate-level educational needs of the JSC community. We are studying the graduate Joint Institute of Aeroflight Sciences operated since 1971 by George Washington University at the NASA-Langley Research Center. The department has approximately 250 graduate students and attracts approximately 30 percent of its students from outside the Langley area. UH and UHCL graduate courses and academic research connected to the major NASA programs can create those Texans with unique B.S., M.S. and Ph.D. degrees who will be the invaluable human-resources for future high-technology economic growth of Houston, Texas, and the nation.
David Criswell, Ph.D., ISSO Director
Contents
ISSO -- Institute for Space Systems Operations
1994-1995 Annual Report
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