WASHINGTON -- Outgoing President William Clinton expects to see an outpouring of research results stemming from the International Space Station. The yield from that orbiting complex may likely set the tone for more adventurous space exploration, such as future Mars missions, the president contends.

When Clinton was asked about the impact that science can have today on society, individuals or government -- in contrast to his younger days -- he immediately focused on the space program.

President Clinton: "Well, first, let me say I think, at a minimum, we are much more aware of the impact of science on our daily lives than we were when I was young. I'll just give you just one example: You just take the space program. For example, where we -- if you go back and look at the rhetoric of President Kennedy and the space program -- we had to get out there and we worriedwe didn't want the Russians to beat us into space, and could they do something negative back here.

"And then you look at the rhetoric around what we're saying about the space station. We've got 16 nations working together and we want it because it will give us some sense, looking back at Earth, about what's happening to the environment on Earth -- how to handle climate change, what else should we do about global warming. It will help us in our studies in a gravity-free environment of all kinds of biological issues, how proteins form, what happens to tissues, all these kinds of things. It will help us in our efforts to resolve remaining questions in the material science area, which have been so pivotal to our growth of productivity and economic strength.

"So if you think about the range of subjects that are part of kind of the basic language of space research, as compared to where it was 35, 40 years ago, it's just one example of that."

Asked about the overall health of NASA, while Clinton is enthused about space, it was noted that the agency continues to run on a somewhat flat budget. The president responded as to how he has viewed NASA -- both in good times, as well as in troubled ones -- during his two terms.

President Clinton: "And I would like to see their budget increase now, because I think that they have proved, after years and years of flat budgets, that they have squeezed a lot of blood out of this turnip. They have really restructured themselves. They have gotten rid of a lot of their relatively inefficient costs. And I believe that now is the time at least to let them start growing with inflation again; if they're going to be able to handle their missions. And I think that what we'll have to see over the next few years is where we go with Mars because you've just got these new pictures, and it looks like there was water there closer to the surface more recently in time than we thought.

"So we need to keep taking pictures. We need to keep trying to -- notwithstanding what happened to the Lander module, we need to find some way to put a vehicle down there that can actually physically get some stuff off the surface and bring it back to us. We need to keepand then I think the rest of the space budget may be in some measure determined by exactly what is going on at the space station, how much progress we'll be making in the whole -- you know, there's seven, eight, nine areas of basic research that I think are likely to have enormous advances as a result of what's going on there. And I think that these two things, more than anything else, will dictate how much money NASA needs and what they need it for."