America’s Destiny Is to Pioneer Space, Quayle Says
Vice President Dan Quayle, who examined launch vehicles manufactured at General Dynamics and met with local entrepreneurs during a stopover in San Diego on Tuesday, called for a revival of U. S. space programs and encouraged the pairing of business and academia to launch high-technology ventures.
“The president and I are committed to American leadership in exploration, understanding, economic use, and, yes, eventual settlement in space,” said Quayle, as he addressed nearly 4,000 employees of General Dynamics’ space systems division.
“We Americans have been pushing back frontiers throughout history,” he said. “Today, space is America’s frontier. America’s destiny is to discover and pioneer space.”
Advocates Colonization
Quayle, tapped by President George Bush to head the National Space Council, advocates colonization of the moon and Mars. He has also urged Congress to approve funding for NASA’s proposed Space Station Freedom.
Although Quayle said he understands critics’ concerns that such projects would be too costly, he argued that the initial investment required for space ventures would reap handsome returns in the form of new industry, jobs and greater scientific knowledge.
“Space is a high-yield investment,” he said.
After the early-morning tour of General Dynamics’ Kearny Mesa plant, Quayle participated in a round-table meeting with entrepreneurs and leaders of CONNECT, UC San Diego’s university-private sector partnership to help fledgling companies enter and succeed in a high-technology marketplace. Quayle left Tuesday evening for Monterey and the San Francisco Bay Area, where he will end his four-day California visit.
The conference with CONNECT leaders was held at QUALCOMM, the manufacturer of advanced satellite communications systems based in Sorrento Valley, San Diego County’s high-tech center.
‘Constructive Meeting’
“We had a very good and constructive meeting . . . learning about competitiveness and strategies on entrepreneurship,” said Quayle, speaking to 200 QUALCOMM employees. “You can see that businesses, entrepreneurship and jobs are very dependent upon space, very dependent upon universities and very dependent upon the entrepreneurial spirit.”
Quayle, chairman of the Council on Competitiveness, a government group charged to form policy recommendations to help the United States get ahead in a high-tech market, expressed interest in learning more about CONNECT.
CONNECT leaders chose to hold the round table at fast-growing QUALCOMM, in part because it exemplifies CONNECT’s philosophy of combining the assets of innovators, universities and industry to transform entrepreneurial spirit into a marketable product.
QUALCOMM is the product of such a strategy, according to its founder, Irwin Jacobs, a former UCSD faculty member who tapped the university’s resources to help set up the company four years ago.
Although the entrepreneurial spirit still runs strong in the United States, Jacobs said, lack of federal funding for scientific education and projects, as well as government restrictions, often curbs start-up efforts. Jacobs and other entrepreneurs who participated in the 45-minute round table, which was closed to the press, expressed these concerns to the vice president.
“We demonstrated to the vice president that significant capital is needed to launch both biotechnology and high-technology ventures,” Jacobs said. “But often there are a lot of government restrictions that prevent us from easily getting access to capital. We need to have those changed.”
For ‘Friendlier’ Tax Laws
Jacobs and others also advocated a change in tax laws to make them friendlier to fledgling high-technology companies.
“One of the other problems of starting up a high-tech company is that eventually you run into the difficulty of finding good high-tech people to staff it,” Jacobs said. “We really need to make an investment in scientific education.”
Jacobs said business leaders are also seeking federal assistance to help smaller companies export their products.
“We have to become more of an export country,” Jacobs said. “Unfortunately, a lot of small companies with good products don’t have the know-how to enter a foreign market. We need a government body to help us sell outside of the U. S. Maybe the Commerce Department can play a greater role in this area.”
Although Quayle made no promises to the entrepreneurs, Bill Otterson, CONNECT director, said the vice president was receptive to the group’s suggestions.
“I think he recognized that this (bio- and high-technology) is where our future lies,” Otterson said. “He wanted to come and see CONNECT. I think he sees it as a paradigm of using business, entrepreneurs and universities to stay competitive in the international market.”
Takeoff on Name
“I’m delighted to be here at QUALCOMM,” said Quayle, who jokingly enunciated the company’s name like his own last name, rather than by its proper pronunciation: kwal-comm. Quayle also participated in a demonstration of one of the company’s satellite communication products.
Quayle tested OmniTRACS, a satellite-based, mobile communications system that has been successfully marketed by the company. It is the first and only two-way satellite-based communications system now on the market and has been eagerly received by certain industries, such as trucking companies. Such a communications system allows trucking operation centers to maintain constant contact with their fleets.
For example, a central dispatcher can contact a truck on a cross-country run and inform the driver of an unexpected pickup.
By typing on a computer keyboard linked to a satellite dish, Quayle messaged Bob Brown, a trucker traveling in the vice president’s home state of Indiana.
“Dear Bob, Welcome to Indiana. Keep on trucking. Don’t forget to come home,” Quayle typed. A few minutes later, a response appeared on Quayle’s computer screen.
Brown replied: “Hello, Mr. Vice President from the Hoosier State.”
