CHAPTER 21

OBJECTIVES, PLANS, AND BUDGETS

As the peak of labor on Apollo passed, following the middle of the decade, and as NASA completed more and more of the projects undertaken in the first years of the agency, the question of NASA’s future course assumed a growing importance in the minds of NASA managers. For a decade the quest for world leadership in space had helped to sustain NASA’s program. But success brought a particular erosion of that support. For, when it became clear that the United States was at the very least fully competitive with the USSR, and more likely was well ahead of them in space research and engineering, the initial motivation dwindled. There began a reassessment of NASA’s mission, particularly by the executive side of government. Coming at a time of national reassessment of priorities, of concern about civil rights and student unrest, of disenchantment with the Vietnam War, and a shaky economic situation, the reassessment was bound to affect the agency.

To many who had a say about NASA’s budget-especially in the Nixon administration, but actually well before then-the precise nature and importance of NASA’s mission were not at all clear. The strongest challenges to NASA’s role came in space applications, where by law other agencies had the prime responsibilities. Meteorological and oceanographic applications now came under the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which had absorbed the former Weather Bureau and much of the Navy’s oceanographic activities along with a number of other responsibilities.¹ In communications other agencies called the shots: for national policy, the Office of Telecommunications in the White House; for commercial uses, the Federal Communications Commission, the Communications Satellite Corporation, and private industry; for regulation, the Federal Communications Commission; for applications to education and health, the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare; and for use in commercial shipping, the Maritime Commission.² The primary mission in agriculture and forestry-which satellite observations promised to aid substantially-belonged to the Department of Agriculture. Any use of satellites for the exploration and survey of mineral resources fell squarely into the legally assigned mission of the U.S. Geological Survey of the Department of the Interior. As a consequence any payoff from space investments that NASA might seek to realize in space applications would have to be sold in the form of a service to another agency within whose purview the specific application fell.

Even aeronautics-the primary activity of the former National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, which formed the nucleus for NASA, and an activity that remained a strong component of the NASA program-belonged primarily to others; namely, the Department of Defense, the Federal Aviation Administration, and industry.

Only three areas could NASA claim as its own: the development of space techniques and hardware; space exploration; and space science. But in the difficult climate existing 10-15 years after the start of the space program, even these had a hard row to hoe. For example, to assign all development of space techniques and hardware to NASA (excepting, of course, the substantial amount the military did) ran counter to the widely held view that a user should develop his own hardware to meet a specifically perceived need. There are many virtues to this point of view. Certainly a prospective user would be motivated to tailor his research and development to the actual need and to be properly attentive to keeping costs down. Also, the actual user could be assumed to know best exactly what was required for his application. But the large-scale, highly specialized, very expensive test and launching equipment and the large teams that were required for space development and operations argued for assigning the research, development, and operations to a single agency. For each user to duplicate the personnel and facilities would be extremely wasteful. There were accordingly strong pressures on NASA to assume a largely service role in support of the many users interested in applying space methods to their missions. The forces in this direction outweighed the natural desires of the different agencies to provide their own services, and in the balance between the two conflicting pressures NASA maintained an uncertain hold on a role in the field of space applications.

In a period of retrenchment NASA found that role particularly difficult. NASA was expected to perform the necessary advanced research for prospective applications. But in the late 1960s it was difficult to get administration approval for such advanced research in spite of vigorous urging from many congressional quarters for NASA to do more applications work. Before starting any new applications projects, the Office of Management and Budget wanted from potential users not merely pious words in support, but assurances that there were genuine plans to use the new methods, not merely as a supplement to old methods but actually as a more efficient replacement for some of them. Potential users might underwrite specific and clearly realizable applications, but were usually very reluctant to support the advanced engineering and development needed to establish the feasibility of potential applications. Under the circumstances the administration was even less ready to approve the advanced work. This was particularly true when the development, as with earth-resources surveys from space, was likely to introduce large new expenditures into the national budget.

The second NASA mission, space exploration-by which was meant exploration of the moon and planets by men-also was very difficult to support during those later years. Having proved our mettle by being the first to explore the moon, it was not perceived as necessary to prove ourselves further, at least for the time being, by going on to the planets. Nor was the case for permanent earth-orbiting space stations regarded at the time as persuasive. Manned flight in the Space Shuttle and Spacelab-which in the early 1970s gained somewhat grudging support (see pp. 389-9l)-was seen as enough, and to some more than enough, for the time being.

There remained, then, the third NASA mission, space science. Even here the situation was not clear, since one could apply to science the same argument that was being applied to the applications areas. The primary mission in science had long since belonged to another agency, the National Science Foundation.^* But few seemed to wish to press this argument, since the existence of a space science program in NASA served to funnel large amounts of money into science without those dollars having to compete with the funds available through the Science Foundation. The highly specialized character of the tools of space research, plus the mental anguish that would arise if space science budgets had to compete with other science budgets, together with NASA’s practice of providing substantial support to science in the universities, appear to have led the nation’s science community to agree that space science was properly NASA’s. Both the administration and Congress went along.

The searching scrutiny of NASA’s role that took place in the late 1960s and early 1970s, painful at times to those in the agency, in the end proved salutary. Out of the probing emerged an acceptance of a continuing role for the agency in which science, applications, and exploration would all play a part. Freed at last from an uneasy dependence on a passing sense of urgency over the nation’s technological strength relative to that of the USSR, NASA’s position in the 1970s could be intrinsically stronger. During the 1960s the fundamental contribution that space could make to a long list of important practical applications had become plain, and there could be no question but that these applications would be developed in the course of time. Not spurred on by the need to compete with the Soviet Union, the pace might be slower, but it would be more assured. And, like its predecessor National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, NASA Would have a sizable role in providing important services to other agencies.

Likewise the breadth of space science, already apparent in the year following Sputnik, was abundantly clear, and its importance to the continuing development of the country’s technological strength recognized. Again, the pace would certainly be measured, the smaller projects favored, the larger projects thoroughly scrutinized before being accepted, and extremely large and costly projects avoided. But within those limits it would be possible to put high-precision astronomical telescopes in orbit and to explore the farthest reaches of the solar system.

Space exploration, too, could be expected to continue, but at a very much reduced pace. While the planets, might continue to beckon, astronauts would have to await the orderly development of the means and a still-to-be-awakened national desire to explore beyond the moon. Meantime, NASA’s major attention in the field of manned spaceflight would be to create the Space Shuttle and its accompanying equipment and facilities. The Space Shuttle would make flight into space easier, more routine, and more economical. Its versatility and affordability would make the Shuttle the key to the future of America in space. Because the Shuttle would replace a great many of the previously used, expendable launch vehicles, and because the Shuttle would fundamentally change the complexion of space operations, the 1970s became a decade of transition for NASA and those engaged in space research and development.

PLANS

In the first years after Sputnik, when the space program objectives were clear-or at least thought to be clear-planning was relatively straightforward. Administrator Glennan had a small planning group in headquarters under Homer J. Stewart, who earlier had chaired the Defense Department committee that had chosen the Navy’s Vanguard for the International Geophysical Year satellite program. In December 1959 Glennan’s planning group turned out a secret document entitled “NASA Long Range Plan,” a confidential version of which was called the “NASA Ten Year Plan.” ³ These early documents were directed more at estimating what advancing technology might permit in the distant future-a decade or more away-than at establishing a true plan. To create a valid plan in the usual sense, a firmer tie would have to be made with the current program and its prospective evolution into the immediate future.

Like most such products of centralized planning, these documents aroused the criticism of the program divisions and the centers, which felt that the projections did not do justice to their own recommendations. But the papers served to focus the attention of the agency on what was being thought about at the top, and central planning continued, later with the aid of John Hagen, radio astronomer who had directed Vanguard at the Naval Research Laboratory, and Abraham Hyatt, pioneering propulsion engineer.

Space science documents described in chapter 8 provided one source of material for the central plan.⁴ But scientists were by nature opposed to long-range plans. Many felt that NASA’s planning did violence to the way in which scientists worked. It was repeatedly pointed out that what might now be considered a very important project for 10 years later could lose its importance in the light of discoveries made in the interim. NASA managers found it difficult to get scientists to think seriously about scientific plans on the scale of 10 or more years ahead.

Instead, the scientists preferred to indicate broad areas of research that were likely to be important in distant years and to identify specific projects only for the immediate future. To accommodate the need of the agency for long-range planning while not pressing the scientists to be more specific in the long term than they felt they could legitimately be, space science planners evolved a style that differed from that in other areas in the agency. Instead of labeling their documents as specific long-range plans, they began to use such phrases as long-range planning or long-range thinking in titling the papers.⁵ By the fall of 1960 the space science office had settled into a routine of periodically issuing documents with titles suggesting a planning process rather than a firm plan.⁶ In September 1962, the author addressed a memorandum to the Space Sciences Steering Committee, its subcommittees, and space science division directors describing the long-range and short-range planning process to be followed for space science and specifying procedures for keeping the planning timely.⁷ An important tool of this planning process was the “Space Science Prospectus," which was updated at least once a year.⁸

Described as a source document for space science planners, the prospectus contained a large number of possible projects or scientific investigations that appeared sufficiently important to consider including in the program. The prospectus, however, contained many more projects than could be undertaken with the expected budgets. Nevertheless, to make the prospectus much more than just a list of potentially desirable projects-a mere “wish list" as some put it-the projects set forth in the prospectus were studied and analyzed to determine costs, manpower, schedules, launch vehicles, facilities, and supporting services that would be needed to carry them out.

Each year when the budget was prepared the prospectus was drawn upon for projects to put into the budget request. In the process, projects most likely to be candidates for the next year’s budget were also identified. In this way the prospectus, while not a plan, became an important element in the space science planning process. Moreover, it furnished a mechanism for the scientists to engage in the long-range thinking of the agency without doing too much violence to their natural reluctance to specify too far ahead.

NASA Administrator James Webb did not object to the Office of Space Science and Applications’ use of the prospectus. But he was not in favor of publishing long-range plans, in spite of constant congressional pressure to get them. Webb preferred to reveal the agency’s course year by year in the annual budget proposals. As he stated it, in putting out the current year’s proposals one gears up to do battle for them. In the defense of the budget one has the immediate assistance of those ready to support the program. But publishing a plan that goes much beyond the current year invites adversaries to shoot the agency down at their leisure. Friends and supporters aren’t prepared to come forward to defend the agency in what must for the moment seem largely an academic exercise. Meantime, enemies will seize upon different aspects of the plan-often out of context-to challenge and embarrass the agency.

Not being a true plan, the space science prospectus did not afford detractors the kind of leverage that a fixed plan would have. As a consequence Webb permitted the document to be updated and issued each year, although he periodically called attention to the dangers of being too specific too early.

When the author became associate administrator, the various program; offices had become accustomed to developing their own plans without too much consideration of the planning of the other offices. Webb asked that an agency-wide planning activity be developed. Working with the Planning Steering Group created for the purpose, the author intended to create a NASA prospectus much along the model of that used in space sciences. It was estimated that perhaps as much as five years would be required to do this; but before getting beyond the initial stages administrations changed, and the Republicans called for a specific space plan. Moreover, Thomas Paine, who took over from Webb, favored publishing specific plans and was willing to stand up and fight to defend them. Paine’s view was that leaving options open for the future was simply an indication of not having thought through those options. Under Paine, and later under the fourth administrator, James C. Fletcher, NASA began again to develop and publish long-range plans for the agency and to use them in preparing short-range plans and budget proposals. Paine’s plans turned out to be too sweeping and expensive to receive administration support, while Fletcher’s more modest, almost constant-dollar-level plans did gain Nixon’s backing and helped to launch NASA on the Space Shuttle development program.

BUDGETS

To the scientists in space program management, nothing could be duller than an endless round of budgets, appropriations, obligations, cost accruals, and expenditures. Hence it came as something of a surprise when one of the author’s colleagues on the financial side of things began to commiserate that the fates had tricked so many people into the boring, impersonal, uninspiring field of science, when by a more happy stroke of fortune they might have been led into the vital, intensely human, and real world of budget and finance!.

The phrase “real world of budget and finance" struck a responsive chord, for clearly the resources made available to NASA determined what the agency could do. Moreover, those who did deal full time with the budgets and expenses of the agency were undoubtedly the most completely informed as to what NASA was doing, at least in a general sense, and probably had as good an idea as anyone as to how all the parts fitted together into a total program. Through a detailed analysis of the agency’s budget requests, appropriations, and expenditures the historian can get a comprehensive picture of what NASA was up to, and at the very least can put together a complete framework around which to weave the very human story of the nation’s venture into space. Although such an analysis is beyond the author’s interests and powers of endurance, a few general observations are in order.

As it was, the fates that had led scientists into NASA Headquarters had provided amply for their participation in the “real world of budget and finance.” Work with budgets never ceased. It was an essential part of converting plans into reality. In the spring, even as the defense before Congress of the current budget request was getting under way, the agency would begin exchanges with the Bureau of the Budget-which became the Office of Management and Budget under Nixon-as to the likely acceptable level of the next budget request, for the period beginning some 16 months later. Throughout the spring and summer the detail of this exchange would grow until by fall the bureau would have in its hands a complete budget proposal. The proposal, of course, had grown out of the program planning that went on continually in the agency. During the fall and winter, the final budget proposal would be developed in sometimes heated discussion, often with many compromises, between NASA and the administration. In late January, as part of the now enormous national budget, the space program request would be sent to the Congress for review, authorization, and appropriation.⁹

In the midst of this process, hearings on the previous budget request had been going on, and in the summer or autumn Congress had authorized new obligations for the program and had appropriated funds. Thus, throughout the year NASA managers worked intimately with three separate budgets: (1) conducting the current year’s program corresponding to the recently authorized budget, (2) defending a budget request for the next fiscal year, and (3) preparing still another budget request for the fiscal year after that. Such activities kept the scientists-turned-managers away from the science they would have preferred to do; but, along with planning and formulating a program, budgeting was an essential element of the headquarters management job.

The business of gaining the necessary budgets involved a great deal of salesmanship and political savvy. An important part of the work of NASA’s top management was to develop and preserve a climate in which the lower echelons could sell their wares. Much of this responsibility fell directly on the administrator, whose relations with the president and other administration officials, and with leaders in the Congress, had a determining influence on how successful the agency would be.

James Webb used to emphasize that the way to sell a program was to get the support of the president. Having that, all the rest moved along in more or less orderly fashion-unless, of course, the agency found itself in the middle in one of the classic confrontations between the legislative and executive forces such as did occur during the 1960s when the Congress tried to recapture some of the initiative that seemed to have passed to the White House. In the course of NASA’s history the complexion of presidential backing varied widely. President Eisenhower, a lukewarm supporter of the space program, wished to keep it at a relatively modest level. His choice for first administrator, T. Keith Glennan, kept a tight rein on the newly evolving program. President Kennedy gave strong support, particularly after he had personally proposed the Apollo program to Congress. Under Kennedy, NASA’s program and expenditures grew rapidly toward the peak of $6 billion a year during Lyndon Johnson’s administration.¹⁰ As one of the architects of the National Aeronautics and Space Act of 1958, Johnson brought with him to the vice presidency and later to the presidency a built-in commitment to a vigorous national space effort. This commitment lasted throughout his incumbency in the Oval Office, although in the last year the turmoil and emotional toll of the times had begun to weaken his original enthusiasm, and to Webb the president’s backing of the space program seemed at times to become indifferent. President Nixon had no binding intellectual commitment to space, or at any rate none not easily overridden by political expediency-even though he had been one of the first to endorse the early efforts to establish a national space program. Nixon enjoyed and took political advantage of each Apollo mission and other space successes, and shrewdly considered the political impact of any major space program presented for his approval and backing.

The different flavors of presidential attitude toward the space program were felt in the discussions that NASA went through each year with the Bureau of the Budget or the Office of Management and Budget. In the early years a reasonably well-planned budget secured fairly ready acceptance. in the administration. Major issues sparked by the country’s sudden precipitation into this pew arena included the question of how soon the United States could close the launch vehicle gap with the Soviet Union and the relative roles of the NASA and military space programs.

Congress, of course, had the final say as to how much money would be authorized and appropriated for NASA. In those first years NASA had little trouble in. getting its budgets passed. In fact, throughout the years Congress consistently gave strong backing to the space program even when, in later years, paring down parts of the budget.

In the period immediately following launch of the first Sputnik, committee members would listen with rapt attention and undisguised enthusiasm to description of plans and accomplishments-and then give NASA pretty much what it asked for. It was a learning period for the legislators as much as it was for NASA. As experience and understanding grew, lawmakers’ questions became more pointed and penetrating, and no longer was there an inclination to accept a budget simply on the grounds that NASA said it was required. But while increasingly critical, the Congress remained basically supportive throughout the years.

NASA budgets for 1958 (fiscal 1959) through 1976 are given in table 8 and figure 68. A comparison of the total space budget with the part assigned to research and development for space science appears in table 9. For the sake of comparison, budgets for space activities in the Department of Defense and other agencies are included in table 8.¹¹

The simplified numbers and graphs cannot give a true picture of the agency’s funding structure. For example, a good amount of space science was supported with funds in the manned spaceflight budget, since the exploration of the moon necessarily included a great deal of scientific investigation. Likewise, much advanced research and technology was important to space science and could properly be charged to that activity if one chose to do so. But, with these limitations in mind, it is still possible to derive some valid impressions about the support that space science received through the years.

First, while never a major part of NASA’s total budget, space science funding was nevertheless an appreciable part of the total, at times accounting for as much as 20%. Actually, as Webb continually pointed out, invidious comparisons of absolute or relative numbers did not make sense, because, while manned spaceflight did indeed enjoy much greater funding than did space science-as the scientific community repeatedly complained that did not imply a lack of suitable support for science. The Gemini and Apollo projects simply cost more money, and if the nation was going to have a manned spaceflight program, it had to pay the necessary costs. The proper question to ask was not whether manned spaceflight was getting more money than space science, but whether space science was getting the funding it needed. Webb would add that even if the scientific should manage to get the manned spaceflight program canceled-as Abelson and others would have liked ¹²- the monies would not be reassigned to the science program, which would continue to have to justify its budget on its own merits.

United States Space Budget

(18-year budget summary- budget authority in millions of dollars)

* Excludes amounts for air transportation.

[May not add, because of rounding]

NASA Budget-Space Sciences Research and Development
(millions of dollars)

* Space science was also assigned additional funding for construction of facilities, research and program management, and administrative operations.

Certainly the funding available to space science was enough to pay for a great deal of scientific research. The tens and hundreds of millions of dollars per year available in NASA’s appropriations for science were a far cry from the one or two millions per year with which the Rocket and. Satellite Panel had to make do. In fact, the amount of money going into space science was so large in comparison with other science budgets-for example, NASA’s funding of space astronomy equaled or sometimes exceeded the National Science Foundation’s entire budget for ground-based astronomy-that many scientists were greatly concerned. But space scientists, spurred on by the growing number of exciting problems that the field had to offer, did not hesitate to complain about not getting their fair share of the space budget.

When the Apollo program was introduced, the upward slope of the space science budget lessened appreciably. This point was not missed by the scientists who felt that the rapid rate of increase in the space science budget would have continued had not the Apollo program imposed its great demands. The point could not be proved-and in fact there were those who thought that the NASA budget, including that for space science, would soon have leveled off had it not been for the sustaining influence of the manned spaceflight program. Both Webb and the Apollo people were convinced that the Apollo budget helped to keep the other budgets up. With this in mind, as an aid to justifying budget requests, the practice developed of dividing NASA’s total request into three parts: Apollo and related manned spaceflight work; other programs that supported Apollo, such as unmanned lunar exploration, studies of the space environment, and solar physics; and the remaining NASA program.

For the scientists, especially those who were opposed to the Apollo program, this practice of justifying a substantial part of the space science program on the basis of what it could do for Apollo was anathema. In their view space science, like space applications, was one of the intrinsically valuable components of the space program, justifiable on its own merits. Moreover, during the long period of preparation for the manned lunar missions, most of the substantive achievements of NASA came from the applications and space science programs, not from manned spaceflight.¹³ But for NASA management it was a matter of practical politics, of recognizing the realities of life: better to assign science to a service role and get the money to carry it out than to risk a loss in total funding just to keep the science pure.

The scientists had a stronger reason for complaint when programs were actually cut short for lack of sufficient funding. The lunar projects Ranger, Surveyor, and Lunar Orbiter, all terminated just as they were getting into full swing, were cases in point.¹⁴ So was the cancellation of the Advanced Orbiting Solar Observatory, which caused almost a hundred solar physicists to petition NASA for better support.¹⁵ But as Administrator James Webb and Associate Administrator Robert Seamans could point out, such actions were not arbitrary or whimsical, nor were they antiscience in nature. In fact, Webb was one of the strongest supporters of a balanced space program. When, in 1962, the Apollo program needed an additional $400 million, President Kennedy seemed ready to accept a suggestion that the funds be taken from other parts of the NASA budget. To do so, however, would have crippled the space science and applications programs, and Webb refused to go along. Mr. Webb told the author that he had indicated to the president an unwillingness to continue as administrator of a program that did not have a proper balance among space science, applications, technology, and manned spaceflight. In a letter to the president, Webb offered to wait until the next budget to request the additional funds for Apollo, a compromise that was accepted.¹⁶ Throughout his tenure Webb continued to give strong backing to space science, but he also refused to accept as a valid complaint the grumbling of scientists that manned spaceflight was getting most of the NASA dollars.

Given the need to keep within imposed budget limitations, there was a logic to the cuts made in the space science program during the mid-1960s. For the lunar missions, it was pointed out that while the investigations would cease for a while, nevertheless when Apollo flights began the lunar studies could be picked up again with the added power provided by the personal presence of astronauts on the moon. The reasoning was legitimate, but not acceptable to many scientists who felt that unmanned investigation of the moon was more economical and more versatile, hence more sensible. Nevertheless, NASA managers had to insist that Apollo was a national commitment, entered into for many reasons and not primarily for science, and that the most desirable total program would be one that made effective use of Apollo for science as well as for other purposes. The case of the Advanced Orbiting Solar Observatory was different, in that Skylab’s Apollo Telescope Mount, which replaced the observatory, would not duplicate what AOSO could have done. One could show that the unmanned spacecraft was needed for the more advanced investigations of the sun requiring long-duration monitoring of solar activity for a substantial fraction of a sunspot cycle, and high spatial, temporal, and spectral resolutions not afforded by either the first solar observatory satellites or the Skylab telescopes to come. Although Skylab in the manned program did provide a means for some excellent solar research, the need for the advanced, long-duration observatory persisted, and in the course of time much of what the Advanced Orbiting Solar Observatory would have done was accomplished in a continuing series of improved solar satellites: OSOs G-K.¹⁷

But, whatever complaint there might have been about either the absolute or relative level of the space science budget within the agency’s total, there can be little doubt that it represented a substantial program. Through the 1960s and into the 1970s support for science in the space program remained, perhaps steadier in the Congress than on the executive side. But the backing was by no means unquestioning. Congressman Joseph Karth, who for most of the 1960s was chairman of the Subcommittee on Space Science and Applications of the House Committee on Science and Astronautics, was a powerful advocate of the science and applications programs. He was an equally formidable inquisitor of NASA representatives who appeared before his subcommittee. No detail of the budget seemed too small for his eye or his interest, and space science managers each year supplied the subcommittee with reams of testimony and written reports in justification of the space science budgets.¹⁸ For the historian interested in the evolution and progress of the program, the printed records of both the House and Senate authorization committees make informative, if somewhat dreary, reading.

When Apollo passed its peak funding in fiscal 1966 and began to decline, drawing the total NASA budget down at the same time, much of NASA’s planning was directed toward finding new programs and projects to follow the lunar missions. The initial failure of that effort has already been described, and for a while the worrisome decline raised doubts as to just what the future of the space program might be. It was during this period that a number of scientists-among them James Van Allen and Thomas Gold, physicist at Cornell University-suggested that manned spaceflight could be greatly reduced or dispensed with.¹⁹ For $2 billion a year a substantial program of primarily science and applications could be carried out. The overriding theme in the debates was economy; and until NASA satisfactorily addressed this issue the budget continued to decline.

Two factors turned the tide. First, even though the manned spaceflight program, mostly because of the tremendous expense of Apollo, was the principal target of attack, there was an underlying reluctance in Congress, in the administration, and even among many of the scientists, to forego something that had brought so much prestige and acclaim to the United States. Second, once NASA had become willing to let go of the Saturn-Apollo line and to stop pushing for an early program to build permanent space stations in orbit or on the moon, the Space Shuttle could be presented as a means of greatly reducing the costs of space operations. In the role of a service to the rest of the space program, manned spaceflight once again became salable. The decline in NASA’s budget stopped, and after failing to around $3.25 billion began slowly to climb again as the Shuttle program got under way.²⁰

THE SPACE SHUTTLE

As the 1970s began, the Space Shuttle, scheduled for the 1980s, looked very much like the keystone of the future for the space program. Nevertheless, even experts were hard put to follow all the ins and outs of the seemingly infinite variety of tradeoffs between technical and economic factors that had to be considered in arriving at the final design of the new space vehicle. Bypassing all of that, plans boiled down to the following. The Shuttle would be able to:

• Launch to near-earth orbit the kinds of payload that the previous expendable space launch vehicles could.
• Place in near-earth orbit payloads weighing 10 tons or more. This would make possible the launching of a large space telescope, which was of considerable interest to scientists. Heavy payloads for high-energy astronomy would also be possible.
• Recover such heavy payloads from orbit and return them to the ground. Refurbishing and updating of expensive spacecraft and equipment for reuse would then be possible.
• Carry experimenters with a minimum of spaceflight training into orbit and back. Only the pilot and copilot would have to be fully qualified astronauts.
• Remain on orbit for several days or even several weeks, operating in effect as a temporary space station.
• Carry into orbit and return to earth an outfitted laboratory for the performance of experiments in the space environment. Investigators would go aloft to conduct the experiments.

The development cost, spread over the decade of the 1970s, was estimated at some $5 billion (1971 dollars). The operating cost per flight, including refurbishment, was expected to be on the order of $10 million (again in 1971 dollars).²¹

The idea of a shuttle to space was not new. Various schemes for using lifting bodies to return passengers to earth after flight in space were floating around in the 1950s, but the United States was not then prepared to make much of them. With imagination one could visualize the X-15 as an early step toward a manned space launcher.²² The Air Force’s Dyna-Soar, which was never completed, would have been still another step.²³ But none of these posed the challenges that an operational space plane would. The problems of aerodynamics, structure, thermal protection, and guidance and control in creating a vehicle that would go into orbit like a space launcher and thereafter return to earth and land like an airplane were intimidating. A great deal of work had to be done before one could seriously contemplate proceeding with the project. But after additional years of experience in high-speed flight with the X-15 and Apollo programs, in 1968 and 1969 a number of NASA members including George Mueller, head of the Office of Manned Space Flight, were ready to promote a space shuttle. Even so, many industrial representatives were frank to say that they were not sure the project could yet be pulled off, considering that not only did the technical problems have to be solved, but it all had to be done cheaply by aerospace standards.

And that factor of economy lay at the heart of the shuttle’s salability. After the very expensive Apollo, in the midst of a period of economic recession, inflation, and dwindling balance of trade, the country was not about to support another costly space project unless it had some clearly foreseeable practical benefits. National concern with issues other than space had permitted the NASA budget to fall from its peak of a little more than $5 billion in the mid-1960s to about three-fifths the peak value at the end of the decade. The agency would be fortunate if it could keep the budget from going even lower. As has been seen, sentiment in part of the space community to continue with an extensive use of Apollo hardware led to the abortive planning of an Apollo Applications program. Administrator Thomas Paine and Vice President Spiro Agnew would have liked the country to send astronauts to the planets, but that simply wasn’t in the cards. Paine and others would also have favored establishing a very large, permanent space station in orbit. As both Paine and Abe Silverstein described the proposition, that would be “the next logical step" in the development of space for man’s use. Much of the necessary experience and know-how had already been acquired in the Gemini and Apollo programs, and it was simply a matter of deciding to make a space station and then doing it.

But there was a flaw in this reasoning. A space station would require frequent logistic flights. With Saturn and Apollo hardware, these would entail enormous expense, hardly the kind of economy that was being demanded.

It took a while, but gradually the message came through. Reluctantly space program managers let go of their more exotic dreams and turned attention to discerning what the country might be willing to support. It became clear that the space program for the foreseeable future would have to emphasize specific returns for the large investments that had been made. As they had repeatedly emphasized throughout the 1960s, members of Congress would favor a strong effort on applications. Also, there appeared to be a continuing support for a substantial space science program. Technology that would clearly be helpful in tackling problems on earth was also a salable item. But whatever was undertaken would have to be done at a much lower cost than hitherto. It appeared that only by becoming much more efficient in the use of dollars could the space program continue in any shape comparable to that of the 1960s.

That was perhaps the major issue in the years of discussion that preceded the decision finally to build the Space Shuttle. The operational capabilities proposed for the new craft were very attractive, to Europeans as well as to Americans, and captured the interest of many scientists. Unlike Apollo, which most of the scientific community appeared to oppose at the beginning, the Space Shuttle had the interest and at least the tentative support of some leading scientists. Even as James A. Van Allen and Thomas Gold spoke out against a shuttle program, many of their colleagues gave it their conditional endorsement.²⁴

During the summer of 1970 the National Academy of Sciences made a study of priorities in the nation’s space science program.²⁵ Inevitably the Space Shuttle came in for much discussion. In a lecture to the study participants, Hermann Bondi, head of the European Space Research Organization, expressed his support for the Shuttle, a view that may have reflected the growing interest of the Europeans in cooperating with the United States on some aspect of a shuttle program.²⁶ One could detect among many of the American scientists a decided interest. But their support was contingent upon a number of conditions.

The study participants made much of the fact that they did not want to get again into a large-scale, manned spaceflight program. They made it plain that they had found much of their experience with the Apollo program distasteful. Hence, if the Shuttle program were to be merely a means to continue a manned spaceflight activity, it would forfeit their interest. In the scientists’ view the Shuttle should be developed and operated as a tool to support the country’s principal objectives in space, one of which was space science. Astronauts would, of course, fly the Shuttle, and on some missions other passengers might go along; but the controlling elements on each flight should be the technology, applications, or science objectives of the mission.

If a proper perspective were maintained on the agency’s objectives, that would mitigate the effect on other programs of the large budgets that would be needed to develop the Shuttle. With the proper perspective, the agency would devote the necessary funds to continuing a strong space science program and to preparing in advance for the use of the Shuttle when it became operational. But the scientists were worried that NASA might not cherish the proper perspective. They had seen the large budgets for Apollo force the curtailment of the Ranger and Surveyor projects and the cancellation of the Advanced Orbiting Solar Observatory. As if to emphasize the point, at the time of the summer study the scientists were wrestling with the impact the expensive Viking-itself a space science project strongly endorsed some years before by a different Academy of Sciences study-was having on other projects favored by space scientists, such as Pioneer missions to Venus.²⁷

These two themes-that the Shuttle should be considered a tool and used as a tool to support space science and that its development and deployment should not be allowed to cripple NASA’s other programs-scientists kept reiterating in the Space Science Board, in NASA’s Space Program Advisory Council and its committees, and in numerous NASA working groups. There were many aspects to the related issues. If the Shuttle were to be a useful tool, it had to be easy to use. In the view of the scientists, that would call for sharply less documentation and testing of equipment than had been required in the Apollo program; schedules also had to be streamlined. As Deputy Administrator Low told the author, it had cost 10 times as much to prepare a magnetometer for the Apollo project as it had to prepare a similar one for an unmanned project. In fact, the main point that the tool should be made to fit the hand, not the hand distorted to fit the tool.

Because of these concerns, in October 1972 NASA put together a Shuttle users group to discuss periodically with the administrator and various program managers how to use the shuttle when it came into being.²⁸ Many groups were already wrestling with how to build the Shuttle and what to use it for, but no group was adequately addressing itself to the question of how it could be run to make the most of its potential. The single most important recommendation to come out of the meetings of this panel was to operate the Shuttle in such a way that the tool did not overshadow the application.

Pursuing both questions, what to do with the Shuttle and how to operate it so as best to serve its users, NASA sponsored still another in the long chain of summer studies on major issues facing the agency. This study was conducted at Wood’s Hole, Massachusetts, in July 1973.²⁹ Again the National Academy of Sciences conducted the study, most of which was devoted to what the Shuttle, particularly the Spacelab it would carry on board, could do for the space program. By that time the scientists had developed a restrained, somewhat worried interest in the vehicle. There was more willingness than hitherto to assume that perhaps the craft could be developed and flown in such a way as to bring down the costs of space missions. There remained still the question of whether it really would be operated as a tool rather than as an end in itself.

The scientists’ fears in this matter were revived by NASA’s insistence that a great deal of attention be paid to how the Spacelab, which the Europeans were developing for the program at a projected cost of several hundred million dollars, would be used. At the time most of the scientists could see little use for Spacelab and wondered-if they were going to be pressured into using it simply to keep man-in-space in the picture. Although the life scientists and atmospheric physicists expressed interest in Spacelab, most of the study participants insisted that they would like to use the Shuttle as a truck to carry payloads into space, including the very heavy ones like space telescopes and high-energy astronomy payloads.

The discussions brought into stark relief another very serious problem. The Shuttle itself would be capable of placing payloads in near-earth orbits; but that would take care of only part of the missions the scientists wanted flown. At one end there were the very small payloads of the kinds that had gone into sounding rockets. Study participants just did not believe that the sounding-rocket class of payload could be accommodated economically within the Shuttle cost structure. Nor, for that matter, did the Shuttle appear to be appropriate for small satellites of the kind that Scouts had been launching, especially payloads that had to go into unusual orbits or trajectories. Would provision be made to keep sounding rockets and a small expendable vehicle like Scout for these requirements?

Also, what about payloads that were headed for synchronous or other high-altitude orbits, or for escape trajectories to the moon and planets? How would these be launched? If the Shuttle were to be used for the initial boost from the earth’s surface, suitable upper stages would still be required to carry the payloads beyond the low-altitude orbit. Was NASA going to ensure that suitable upper staging would be ready for use with the Shuttle, or would there be an undesirable hiatus in such missions when the Shuttle came into operation?

These questions NASA would have to address itself to as the space program moved through the transition period of the 1970s to the 1980s when the Space Shuttle would become the country’s principal space booster. If the various collateral requirements were met, the Shuttle had a rosy future in prospect. If they were not met, NASA could expect trouble with its clients.

The early years of American space science may be taken to be the 1950s and 1960s in which first sounding rockets and then satellites and space probes were used to extend scientific research into outer space. Space vehicles were expendable, new ones being required for each new mission. The decision in 1970 to proceed with the development of a reusable Space Shuttle signaled the end of the era in which only expendable boosters were used. It did not, however, signal the end of expendable rockets, since the Shuttle would probably not meet all near-earth launcher requirements and would certainly have to use additional stages to send spacecraft beyond low-altitude earth orbits.

Nevertheless, the decision inaugurated a period of transition for the space program from conventional methods to the use of the Shuttle. During the period of transition space science and applications programs would continue much as in the past, but in parallel much work would be underway to prepare for the use of the Shuttle. If the Shuttle did perform as promised and did prove to be economical, it could be highly useful for space science. Its usefulness would depend on whether the program were operated so as to support the scientific objectives properly.

Once the Shuttle program was under way, it remained to see how well the engineers could do in creating the vehicle and how wise NASA managers would be in using it.