Category After Apollo?

That Mueller was not fully committed to a space shuttle design responsive to the performance requirements proposed by the NASA/DOD report soon became evident to the Air Force. In a September 15, 1969, memorandum to Secretary of the Air Force Seamans, Air Force Chief of Staff General John Ryan suggested that Mueller had “redirected the activities of the NASA and responsive contractors to a Space Transportation System/Space Shuttle which is knowingly inadequate for the Air Force.” This harsh judg­ment was based on Mueller’s August directive to those studying shuttle designs and Mueller’s comments at a September 10-11 meeting attended by shuttle study contractors and Air Force representatives. At that meet­ing, Mueller had indicated that designs with a payload of 20,000 pounds to the space station orbit, not the 50,000 pounds minimum, which was the national security requirement, should be studied. He also identified cross-range “as desirable but not required.” Mueller was reported as saying that the Air Force position regarding cross-range and payload weight was “soft.”24

Seamans was in a difficult position. On one hand, in his role as STG member he had taken a “go slow” stance with respect to shuttle develop­ment; in his comments at the August 4 STG meeting and the letter he had given Vice President Agnew at that meeting, Seamans had recommended that “we embark on a program to study by experimental means including orbital tests the possibility of a Space Transportation System that would permit the cost per pound in orbit to be reduced by a substantial factor.” Seamans added “it is not yet clear that we have the technology to make such a major improvement.” On the other hand, Seamans recognized that NASA was not taking his advice and instead was pushing for rapid development of an operational shuttle. Given the possibility that a shuttle not meeting national security requirements might be approved, Seamans proposed an action to make sure that those requirements were accommodated in which­ever shuttle design was eventually approved. In November 1969, Seamans wrote NASA Administrator Paine, suggesting “a senior-level management policy board” to guide the shuttle program; such a board would “insure that the interests and objectives of both the DOD and NASA are fully rep­resented and maximum cooperation between the agencies is achieved.” The board, said Seamans, “would be essentially the Board of Directors for the STS development and would be concerned with requirements, technol­ogy, funding, and management.” Given what was happening under George Mueller’s direction at NASA, Seamans added “I am convinced that such a policy board is necessary.”25

In his letter Seamans referred to the Gemini Program Planning Board as a desirable model for the board he had in mind. That board had been set up in 1963, after Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara had attempted to seize control of NASA’s Gemini program. Seamans, in 1963 NASA’s associate administrator, had been on the other side of the table negotiating with McNamara to create an arrangement that retained NASA’s lead role in Gemini while still providing a channel for making sure that the program also served DOD interests. As a senior DOD official six years later, he wanted to make sure that whatever shuttle NASA might propose also served national security interests.26

One challenge in designing a smaller orbiter using an expendable propel­lant tank or tanks was maintaining the 15 x 60 foot payload bay required to launch the largest national security payloads. As NASA began to explore what it called the “drop tank” design, Dale Myers on May 25 wrote Grant Hansen, asking him to “determine if Air Force requirements [which included National Reconnaissance Office payloads] could be accommodated” in a 12 x 40 foot payload bay. He added that “if this is not possible, I would appreciate some thoughts as to what missions must exceed these dimensions and what alternate launch capabilities could be used.”42

Hansen’s reply was negative in tone, saying that a shuttle with the smaller payload bay would “preclude our full use of the potential capability and operational flexibility offered by the shuttle” and would “degrade the pay­load cost savings” that were an important part of the national security inter­est in the shuttle. Maintaining the Air Force Titan III expendable boosters to launch the largest national security payloads would mean that “the potential economic attractiveness and the utility of the shuttle to the DOD” would be “severely diminished.” Hansen estimated with the shorter payload bay “71 of the 149 payloads forecasted for the 1981 to 1990 time period in option C and 129 of the 232 payloads forecasted in Option B of the mission model will require launch vehicles of the Titan III family.” Hansen also noted the negative consequences of a narrower payload bay, especially in terms of the use of a large “transfer stage” to carry national security payloads to geosyn­chronous orbit.43 This response reflected the continuing national security community pressure on NASA to maintain a shuttle design with a large payload bay, even as NASA was seeking an approach to minimize shuttle development costs.

As Caspar Weinberger prepared for the director’s review of OMB staff rec­ommendations with respect to the NASA budget, he was uncertain about what precisely Richard Nixon had meant when he wrote “I agree with Cap” on Weinberger’s August 12 memorandum. On October 19, Weinberger asked Nixon’s chief of staff Bob Haldeman to have the president clarify his intent. Haldeman discussed the issue with the president the same day.

Haldeman: “So you do want to cancel [Apollo]16 and 17?”

Nixon: “Yes, I do want to cancel them, and do other things.”

Haldeman: “Do we want to follow his point, coupling [the cancellation with] the announcement that we’re going to fund the space shuttle?”

Nixon: “That’s right, and let the other two [Apollo missions] go. . . the other

two shots___ I just don’t think we should take the risk of a possible goof

off in the damn thing.”

Haldeman: “The other thing you could do is postpone them.”

Nixon: “Postpone and then cancel them, if you could get away with it. . . That’s right, no shots in ’72.”6

Haldeman reported to Weinberger that “the President did agree with your feeling that a public announcement now of the cancellation of Apollo XVI and XVII would have a bad effect,” but nevertheless Nixon “does want to eliminate” the missions, “at least in calendar year 1972,” and had directed that “steps should be taken immediately to implement that decision.” Nixon also agreed with Weinberger’s point that “if we decide to eliminate Apollo XVI and XVII that we couple any announcement to that effect with announcements that we are going to fund space shuttles, NERVA, or other major future NASA activities.” Weinberger in reply told Haldeman that Apollo 16 “was scheduled for mid-March 1972 to secure data on some of the oldest events on the moon” and that Apollo 17 was scheduled for December 1972 (after the presidential election, as agreed in January 1971; it seems as if neither Nixon nor Haldeman remembered that agreement) and would provide “the first opportunity for a geologist astronaut to visit the moon.” He noted the modest cost savings if the missions were canceled, and said that if both missions were eliminated “we would lose about 3,800 jobs by June 1972 and about 6,200 by December 1972.” Weinberger concluded, repeat­ing an idea from his August 12 memo, that “if it is decided to cancel either one or both Apollo missions, it could be announced that we were doing so in order to concentrate our resources on other NASA-planned high-priority space objectives, because the prior Apollo moon explorations were so suc – cessful.”7

The combination of Weinberger’s thinking in his August 12 memo, Nixon’s reaction to the memo, and Nixon’s October guidance to Weinberger boded well for eventual shuttle approval. But the battle that would lead to that approval was just beginning. In a 1977 interview, Cap Weinberger recalled that “the OMB staff was against the shuttle, and I was for it, and that produced a very substantial amount of discussion and debate. . . In pre­vious years it apparently was not necessary to get to a decision point, but in that particular year [1971] . . . it was an active part of the budget, and after the various arguments and presentations, I supported it. . . After the so-called director’s review, I indicated to the staff that I disagreed with them, that I would recommend that particular item, and they protested and we had many more arguments.” Weinberger added that “I had personal feelings that this was something we should be doing. . . If I had not taken as strong a position as I did in favor of it, that ultimately just the force of inertia would have prevailed.” A major influence on Weinberger’s positive views on the shuttle and the space program in general were his interactions with Bill Anders, who “stoked his [Weinberger’s] enthusiasm for space at any opportunity.”8

Weinberger’s support for the shuttle at the director’s review did not trans­late into approval of the Mark I/Mark II shuttle program that NASA was proposing. At the director’s review the alternatives being examined by the Flax committee, including a smaller shuttle and a glider, were also discussed. While Weinberger indicated that he would recommend to the president going ahead with some form of a shuttle program, he was told by his staff “if we wanted to do it, it could be done less expensively, I was delighted to hear that, and. . . they went back and worked with NASA to work out a different configuration. In other words, did we have to have a vehicle that could carry that much on each trip, or couldn’t we have a smaller one that could make more trips. Why did we need one this big?” He added “I could have cut it off at the director’s review, and insist that we are going to do it the way NASA wants it. But the opportunity to do it at a lower cost on additional analysis appealed to me.” Even so, Weinberger added, “I never had any doubt in my own mind but, one way or the other, I wanted to do it.” Weinberger’s will­ingness to let the OMB staff consider shuttle designs different from the full capability shuttle that NASA was proposing, itself still not very well defined, opened the door to a very confusing debate, as multiple versions of a shuttle were examined. According to Weinberger, the OMB professional staff had “a certain degree of pride. The staff doesn’t like to be overridden, and they were firmly convinced that they were right, and that this was not a thing the government should be doing.”9

NASA, as was the practice, was not formally notified of the results of the director’s review, and thus did not realize that there had been a decision that some sort of shuttle program would be recommended to the president by Weinberger. On a very confidential basis, Anders told Low only that the director’s review was characterized by “general discussion only, and no decisions were made.” With respect to the shuttle, Anders reported that “there appears to be a general acceptance that the United States must stay in the manned space flight business,” but “the assembled group still felt that the Mark I/Mark II Shuttle was too much” and that “the Flax Committee has recommended something less than the Mark I/Mark II.”10 The results of the October 22 OMB director’s review thus only muddied the waters with respect to eventual shuttle approval. Weinberger had indi­cated that he would recommend developing a space shuttle to President Nixon, but his willingness to allow his staff to define an alternative, less expensive shuttle design than what NASA was proposing meant that the character of the shuttle he would recommend was still very much up for grabs.

In his reaction to Cap Weinberger’s August 12 memorandum and with the October 19 clarification of his intent, Richard Nixon had seemingly agreed that if Apollo 16 and 17 were canceled, there needed to be compensatory actions in terms of announcing approval of new space efforts, including the space shuttle but also the NERVA nuclear rocket engine program or other NASA activities. This was not yet a specific decision to approve shuttle development, but rather an indication that the president was leaning in that direction.

President Nixon did make a significant step toward such a decision dur­ing a November 24 meeting discussing “sensitive and significant issues in the FY1973 budget.” Attending the Oval Office meeting were Nixon’s top assistant for domestic policy John Ehrlichman, OMB Director George Shultz, and Secretary of Treasury John Connally, a new member of Nixon’s inner circle. In preparing him for the meeting, Domestic Council Deputy Director Ed Harper alerted Ehrlichman that a “complete alterna­tive NASA program [was] being developed by OMB [and] should be ready this week. Extraordinarily important that this decision is carefully staffed out.”4

Ehrlichman came to the meeting with a two-page list of issues for discus­sion. One item asked “Will the budget style be: (a) expansive? (b) austere? (c) neither?” Another question was “What economic (employment) assump­tions will be displayed?” Eighteen program issues were listed; space was third, after general revenue sharing and welfare reform. As the four men got to the space issue, the following discussion occurred:

Nixon: “Space, what’s the problem here?”

Ehrlichman: “Well the problem here is do we go ahead with the next two shots? [Apollo 16 and 17]”

Nixon: “No! If we go, no shots before the election.”

Ehrlichman: “Then what would we do with all those employees?”

Nixon: “For those shots? How many, George?”

Shultz: “17,500 or something like that.”

Nixon: “I don’t like the feeling of space shots between now and the elec­tion.”

Ehrlichman: “But thinking of this thing [the space program] in just pure job terms, it is a hell of a job creator.”

Connally: “The American people are really not impressed by any more space shots.”

Nixon: “NASA is saying you’ll find incredible things about the Moon with these last two shots, and the American people say ‘so what’?”

Shultz: “Could I try another possibility? The last shot is the one in which they have loaded a great amount of scientific stuff from the ones that have been canceled before. That shot is scheduled after the election.”

Nixon: “I only see a minor waste of money. Keep the people on, but don’t make the shots. I just don’t feel the shots are a big deal at this time. . . There is also the risk you could have another Apollo 13 . . . That would be the worst thing we could have. . . We are just not going to do it. There will not be any launches between now and the election. The last shot, fine. Let’s go forward with the last shot.”

Ehrlichman: “The southern California people have a mighty press on for the space shuttle to be located in southern California. It is a highly visible kind of thing, if we were to announce at the State of the Union or sometime that you were going ahead with the shuttle.”

Nixon: “This is not a State of the Union thing. I should do it [announcing shuttle approval] out in California where you are going to put it. Jobs— right, John? Do it in terms of jobs. It ought to be in California.”

Shultz: “NASA has a full thrust [shuttle] program, but there are options that are a little more modest.”

Nixon: “Take the more modest option. We’ll take a look later to see [if that is the right choice.] It’s the symbol that we are going to go forward. We are going to be positive on space. Nobody is going to be against us if we go forward in space, and a few will be for us because we do.”

Ehrlichman: “If you tell the aerospace industry that we are going ahead on the shuttle, that helps right now.”

Shultz: “While the shuttle and Skylab will keep men in space to a degree, the direction of this program ought to shift away from man in space and toward doing most of these things on an unmanned basis.”

Nixon: “I agree. Manned space flight becomes a stunt after a while.”5

Ehrlichman later thought the basic decision to develop a space shuttle had been made at this meeting. His record of the discussion, prepared only on January 4, the day before Nixon was to announce his shuttle decision, said that on November 24 “the President decided to support the space shuttle providing it could be located in California.” After this meeting there was little doubt that some form of space shuttle would be approved by the Nixon administration; the question was whether it would be NASA’s preferred full capability shuttle orbiter design or a smaller alternative as was being sug­gested by OMB.6

There are a number of interesting elements to this November 24 discussion. The space program, including both the ongoing Apollo effort and the space shuttle, was being evaluated by Nixon and his top advisers not only in terms of its substantive value but especially in terms of its employment impacts. In particular, the space shuttle was seen as part of the ongoing White House California Employment Project, aimed at getting the most possible new jobs located in California prior to the 1972 election. Nixon continued to want to avoid the risk of another Apollo 13 accident in the months leading up to that election, believing that such an incident could impact his reelection prospects and the 1972 summit meetings that were part of his attempt to normalize relations with China and the Soviet Union. He judged that the American public was not really interested in more trips to the Moon, which gave him a free hand to defer or cancel the remaining two Apollo missions. Ultimately, Nixon decided to go ahead with the two missions, moving Apollo 16 so that it would not interfere with his China trip and approving Apollo 17 once he recognized that it would take place only after the 1972 election. Perhaps most surprising, it had been an article of policy belief in the White House that Richard Nixon wanted a future NASA program including U. S. astronauts flying in space. Yet in this conversation he had said “manned space flight becomes a stunt after a while.” Even so, he gave the space shuttle a qualified approval as a “symbol,” saying “we are going to be positive on space.” There was little consistency in the Nixon attitude toward human space flight.

President Nixon had decided on December 3 to approve some form of a space shuttle program. Whether or not Richard Nixon was consulted later in December or over the New Year’s weekend, as the decision to approve the full capability shuttle was made, is not clear. There is suggestive evidence to support either possibility.

Prior to the December 29 meeting at which Shultz gave the first indica­tion that he would support the large shuttle, there had been general agree­ment among the White House staff that the issue of shuttle payload bay size and weightlifting capability was too detailed and too technical to bring before the president. There were no meetings with the president to make final decisions on any agency budget appeals, with the exception of the Department of Defense, in the days just before or after Christmas. Nixon was at his Key Biscayne, Florida, residence from December 27-31. There is no record on Nixon’s official schedule of a phone call from anyone involved in the December 29 White House meeting with NASA to discuss its out­come with the president. On December 30, Shultz was still urging Fletcher not to insist on seeing the president with respect to the shuttle decision. On December 31, Nixon did try, unsuccessfully, to telephone Al Rockwell, but this appears to have been just one of many “Happy New Year” calls Nixon placed that day to people with whom he had a personal relationship. Shultz and Weinberger did meet with Nixon on the morning of January 3 after the president returned to Washington, but that meeting was to discuss the overall shape of the FY1973 budget; neither the space shuttle nor any other specific program was discussed.16 All of this evidence tends to suggest that Nixon was not consulted as the final decision on shuttle size was being made.

There is some counterevidence, however, that Nixon might indeed have influenced the final decision on shuttle configuration, whether on that final weekend or before. John Ehrlichman suggested in a 1983 interview that he was sure it was “Nixon’s decision on the thing [shuttle], because the way these things would come to him would be with alternate levels, and then a brief description of the differences—if you go to this level, you get that; if you go to this level, you get that plus this. There wasn’t anybody during that time who made those final decisions except Nixon. . . Defense, space, certain kinds of domestic problems, he was the final arbitrator.” However, Ehrlichman may well have been referring to the November 24 and December 3 meetings at which initial decisions on the space shuttle had been made. As noted in chapter 13, Ehrlichman and Nixon were attracted by the national security uses of the shuttle. Nixon would mention those uses in his January 5 meeting with NASA’s Fletcher and Low, indicating that he was already aware of them. As the final decision on shuttle configu­ration was being made in March 1972, Cap Weinberger would reiterate to Fletcher “the President’s strong interest in retaining the military capabil­ity” as a factor in the “decision on the larger size” shuttle, and Fletcher would say that “the President’s expressed desire to make the shuttle a useful vehicle for military space operations could not be fulfilled with the smaller shuttle.” When, and by whom, Nixon was briefed on the national security uses of the full capability shuttle is not clear. At least Ehrlichman, and prob­ably also Shultz and Weinberger, were aware of Nixon’s interest in national security applications of the shuttle’s capabilities as they made the final deci­sion on shuttle size. That they took the step of actually consulting with the president at that point appears unlikely. While there is no doubt that Richard Nixon gave the green light to developing the space shuttle and that he had expressed interest in the shuttle being able to carry out a wide range of national security missions, it is probable that George Shultz and Cap Weinberger, possibly after consulting Ehrlichman and Flanigan, were the individuals who made the final decision on approving the full capability shuttle. They made that decision on their own, not on the basis of a specific presidential directive.17

On November 24, 1971, Richard Nixon had indicated his preference for a “more modest option” with respect to the space shuttle, and again on December 3 had said “yes” to the OMB proposal to work with NASA to examine a smaller, less expensive shuttle design. Yet when the final decision on which shuttle design would be approved was communicated, and most likely made, by George Shultz and Cap Weinberger, it was NASA’s full capa­bility shuttle that won the day. The evidence suggests that there were three primary reasons for that choice.

One reason was the importance to the White House of a continuing program of human space flight as a symbol of U. S. space leadership. Cap

Weinberger in August 1971 told President Nixon that not moving ahead with some major post-Apollo space effort would be a “mistake,” arguing that such a decision “would be confirming, in some respects, a belief that I fear is gaining credence at home and abroad: that our best years are behind us, that we are turning inward, reducing our defense commitments, and voluntarily starting to give up our super-power status, and our desire to maintain our world superiority.” Nixon had written on Weinberger’s memo­randum “I agree with Cap.” In making its best case for shuttle approval, NASA had argued “man has learned to fly in space, and man will continue to fly in space. This is fact. And, given this fact, the United States cannot forego its responsibility—to itself and to the free world—to have a part in manned space flight. . . For the U. S. not to be in space, while others do have men in space, is unthinkable, and a position which America cannot accept.” As he met with Fletcher and Low on January 5, 1972, President Nixon asked the NASA leaders if they thought that the space shuttle was a good investment. They of course responded positively, but Nixon, echoing NASA’s argument, then added “even if it were not a good investment, we would have to do it anyway, because space flight is here to stay. Men are fly­ing in space now and will continue to fly in space, and we’d best be a part of it.”18 While, as OMB and OST were arguing, a smaller shuttle launched a few times a year would have kept the U. S. human space flight program alive and would have been a useful symbol of U. S. space leadership, clearly a large shuttle launched on a frequent basis would be a much more potent indication of that leadership.

A second reason for the decision to approve the full capability shuttle was President Nixon’s interest in its national security uses. John Ehrlichman in

a 1983 interview suggested that “what the military could do with the larger bay in terms of the use of satellites” and the fact that “the space shuttle would have the capability of capturing satellites or recovering them” had “a strong influence on me” and “weighed into my attitude toward the larger shuttle.” He added “I feel it is valid to say it also weighed into” the president’s evalu­ation of the shuttle. Nixon’s interest in national security uses of the shuttle was well known as final decisions were made, and the president discussed them with Fletcher and Low at their January 5 meeting. As Fletcher and Low met with Cap Weinberger and Jon Rose on March 3, 1972, to discuss NASA’s decision on using solid rocket motors to boost the shuttle orbiter off its launch pad, Weinberger reminded the NASA leaders that “the President’s strong interest in retaining the military capability” was an important factor in “confirming our decision on the larger size” shuttle.19

The third and most immediate reason for the choice of the NASA shuttle was the anticipated short-term employment impact of that choice in par­allel with Richard Nixon’s 1972 reelection bid, particularly in Southern California. The evidence in support of this assertion is conclusive. Aerospace unemployment had emerged as an important political issue in early 1971, particularly after the congressional cancellation of the supersonic transport program. Meeting with Flanigan and Weinberger in May, the president dis­cussed “what could be done about high unemployment areas with specific emphasis on California.” Nixon “indicated a very great concern about the California area and the high level of unemployment among technically – trained individuals.” The White House created a “California Employment Project” to address this issue in a systematic way. In June 1971, even before the shuttle decision process reached its final stage, Cap Weinberger told a California politician “I am sure that whatever is done will be largely based in California.”

On November 24, as he made his initial decision on the space shuttle, President Nixon had commented to Ehrlichman: “Jobs—right, John? Do it in terms of jobs. It ought to be in California.” Ehrlichman recalled that the issue of shuttle-related employment in Southern California “was a very important consideration in Nixon’s mind. . . I can recall conversations about that, which were highly persuasive. . . You must not underemphasize that ele­ment, that employment element, in Nixon’s decision [on the shuttle], the whole manned space program.” When Bill Anders told Ehrlichman in late December that the NASA shuttle would create more short-term jobs than the OMB alternative, the reaction was “OK, that will be the one” chosen. In preparing President Nixon for his January 5 meeting with Fletcher and Low, Flanigan told him that “this program will greatly stimulate the aerospace industry.” Nixon himself, discussing his shuttle approval with his political adviser Charles Colson a few days after it was announced, noted that “in Florida and California this [approving the shuttle] is a big deal. It will save the aerospace industry.” A few months later, he told a delegation from New York lobbying for the shuttle contract to go to Grumman’s Long Island facility that “I’ll take the heat for putting the money there [on the space shuttle contract] rather than the ghettos and all that sort of thing, but then by God we’d better at least get a little credit for it. This is jobs. I mean that is really what is at stake here, jobs.”20

Paine accepted Seamans’s suggestion, which came close to being a demand, given the perceived importance of national security community support if the shuttle program were to move forward. A charter for a NASA/Air Force STS Committee was signed on February 17, 1970. The committee, “in order that the STS be designed and developed to fulfill the objectives of both the NASA and the DOD in a manner that best serves the national interest,” was to conduct a “continuing review” of the STS program and make recom­mendations “on the establishment and assessment of program objectives, operational applications, and development plans.” The agreement noted that the shuttle program “may involve international participation and use” and would be “generally unclassified.” The agreement stated definitively that shuttle development “will be managed by NASA.”27

The committee met six times during 1970, four times in 1971, and once in early 1972. The NASA/Air Force STS Committee turned out to be pri­marily a forum for the national security community to keep pressure on NASA to propose a shuttle design that met the community’s requirements. There was throughout those two years the not-so-veiled threat to withdraw DOD support for the shuttle if NASA did not do so. NASA reflected that pressure in the requirements it established for its continuing shuttle design studies. As the shuttle entered the decisive 1971 year, NASA was proposing a shuttle that would meet all national security requirements, and continued until the final days of 1971 to insist that only such a “full capability” shuttle was worth developing. This position eventually prevailed. The national secu­rity requirements established in 1969 thus had a pervasive impact on the final design of the space shuttle.

In early June, George Low noted that “during discussions with Dale Myers, we had repeatedly decided to look for a phased program approach, but had been unable to establish the technical feasibility of such an approach.” However, “during the past two or three weeks, because of the smaller orbiter made possible by moving the hydrogen tanks outside of the orbiter airframe,” a phased approach was “beginning to look like a technical pos­sibility. Dale Myers and his centers are moving out to establish technical details for this approach.” He added, “in the meantime, von Braun’s group is putting together NASA long range plans, incorporating the phased shuttle development, so that the peak funding during the 1970s need not exceed $4 billion.” Fletcher and Low met with von Braun and his planning staff on May 26. At that meeting, von Braun had reported that “a reasonable shuttle alternative from both developmental and cost savings standpoints” appeared to be the orbiter with an expendable propellant tank, initially launched on an expendable booster, with “subsequent development of a fully reusable booster for use with that orbiter.”44

This advice reinforced the sense that Fletcher had gathered from his White House meetings and exposure to NASA’s thinking on the shuttle in his first month at NASA—that simultaneous development of both ele­ments of a fully reusable two stage shuttle was not a viable approach in either budgetary or technical terms. He had told industry representatives on May 20 that he was not committed to the two-stage reusable approach. George Low had been thinking along the same lines since at least the pre­ceding November. Fletcher, Low, and Myers decided in mid-June to inves­tigate a phased approach; in doing so, they were in essence making a major decision—to give up hopes of developing simultaneously both elements of a shuttle system. Commenting on the influences that led to this decision, Fletcher suggested that three-fourths of the pressure for change came from financial constraints such as the $3.2 billion annual budget proposed in Don Rice’s May 17 letter to Fletcher, and one-fourth from “our own technical concerns” regarding the fully reusable design. With respect to the latter con­cern, Charles Donlan, who had been designated shuttle program director at

NASA headquarters, later commented that “It was not until the phase B’s came along and we had a hard look at the reality of what we mean by fully reusable that we shook our heads saying ‘No way you’re going to build this thing in this century.’ . . . Thank God for all the pressures that were brought to bear not to go that route.” Shuttle program manager Robert Thompson at the Manned Spacecraft Center in Houston agreed, saying that the fully reusable shuttle was “a bridge too far.”45

On June 16, NASA announced that it would be “examining the advantages of a ‘phased approach’ to the development of a reusable space shuttle system in which the orbiter vehicle would be developed first and initially tested with an interim expendable booster.” In addition, the NASA press release said, quoting Fletcher, “we have been studying. . . the idea of sequencing the development, test, and verification of critical new technology features of the system” such as its rocket engines, thermal protection, and electronic sys­tems. Fletcher added “we now believe that a ‘phased approach’ is feasible and may offer significant advantages.”46 To give its contractors additional time to explore the implications of such an approach, NASA extended its study con­tracts, which were due to expire on June 30, by four months. Recognizing that with the adoption of the phased approach Mathematica’s analysis of the economics of a fully reusable shuttle had been overtaken by events, NASA also gave Mathematica a contract extension to examine the economics of alternative shuttle systems.

Even as he announced this shift in plans, Fletcher was pessimistic about the future of the shuttle program. Writing to leading space scientist James van Allen, who was scheduled to testify before Congress in opposition to the shuttle, Fletcher suggested that “the political cards are so heavily stacked against this program. . . that no opposition from the scientific community is necessary. I think you are shooting at a dead horse. . . My feeling is that those who oppose the shuttle program—and there are good reasons for opposing certain portions of it—would be wise not to say anything now and let nature take its course.”47

NASA’s shift in direction did not please all potential users of the shuttle. In particular, in response to the June 16 announcement, Secretary of the Air Force Robert Seamans suggested that “because of the extensive effort that has gone into the evolution of the current shuttle baseline, I believe it is a system that can perform our needs.” He suggested that phased development “would reduce the potential utility of the shuttle for DOD for an indefinite period.” Seamans urged NASA to make every effort to stay with “a reusable booster and orbiter with the 15 x 60 foot payload bay.” The continuing national security pressure on NASA to develop a shuttle meeting that com­munity’s needs was a factor that could not be ignored.48

Also responding to NASA’s June 16 announcement that it was examin­ing a phased approach to shuttle development, OMB’s Don Rice on July 20 noted that “in light of continuing fiscal constraints,” such a move was “very appropriate.” But Rice wanted more than just deferring booster develop­ment. He urged NASA as it rethought its strategy for the shuttle to place emphasis “on defining approaches which will substantially reduce the over­all investment cost of the future space transportation system.” Rice wanted NASA to examine “alternative, lower cost systems” such as “expendable sys­tems, partially expendable systems, the stage and one half concept.” Rice noted that “while the economic analyses conducted to date have been very useful, they have not covered the full range of alternatives,” a point that Mathematica was also making in its report. Rice wanted additional economic analysis with respect to alternative systems in terms of “estimated payload savings, realistic mission models, and alternative payload characteristics.” He would later reflect on “the difficulty of getting any attention paid to alter­native [shuttle] designs,” noting “how hard it was to get an examination of alternative specifications of what you wanted to accomplish and the systems design that reasonably derived from that.”49

With its de facto decision to abandon concurrent development of a shuttle orbiter and booster, NASA had once again adjusted its plans to the reality of what kind of post-Apollo space program the Nixon administration might be willing to approve. Already the ambitious plan set out in the Space Task Group had been stillborn, and NASA had abandoned hope of developing simultaneously a large space station and the space shuttle. With the adoption of an expendable propellant tank design and particularly a phased approach to shuttle development, NASA was making a third major adjustment, giv­ing up for at least some years, if not forever, on its plans to develop a fully reusable two-stage shuttle. The June 16 announcement opened the door to an intense and broad-ranging effort in the next several months to identify a shuttle system design that represented the best compromise among several conflicting objectives. They included:

• keeping the annual shuttle development budget at or less than $1 billion per year, the budget level that would fit within an overall NASA allocation of $3.2 billion per year that Don Rice had suggested was an appropriate target;

• minimizing the cost of shuttle operations so that the cost per flight was as low as possible;

• maximizing the number of future missions that the shuttle would fly, in order to spread the cost of shuttle development and operation across a robust mission model and thus make the investment in shuttle develop­ment economically sound; and

• retaining the capabilities that would convince the national security com­munity to commit to using the shuttle and would allow NASA to plan for a future shuttle-launched space station.

Between June and December 1971, there was “a frantic search for the most cost-effective and technically sensible” shuttle design; in that search there were dozens of alternate configurations and development approaches con­sidered. In the words of one close observer, during those months “everyone became a shuttle designer.”50

One of the other key actors over the November-December period was sci­ence adviser Ed David. When Fletcher first discussed the shuttle program with David in May 1971, he had found David rather negative with respect to the wisdom of moving ahead with that program, at least as NASA was then defining it. By late September, David was still “negative about the wis­dom of a shuttle in view of the political pressures, both from the public and the Congress,” was “receptive to the idea that we needed some kind of a new booster for the ’80’s,” but was “not sure that the shuttle is the way to develop that booster.” David’s main concern was “assuming that we do need a manned space program, is the shuttle the best program we can come up with?”11

As discussed in the previous chapter, David had created an ad hoc panel of the President’s Science Advisory Committee (PSAC), chaired by Alexander Flax of the Institute of Defense Analysis, to advise him on the shuttle program. Flax made an interim report on the committee’s delib­erations to David on October 19. Flax noted that the committee “was far from achieving any degree of unanimity regarding the attractiveness, util­ity, desirability, or necessity of the shuttle system or, for that matter, on the virtues of alternatives to it.” He added that “most of the members of the Panel doubt that a viable program can be undertaken without a degree of national commitment over the long term analogous to that which sustained the Apollo program. Such a degree of political and public support may be attainable, but it is certainly not now apparent.” He observed that “plan­ning a program as large and as risky (with respect to both technology and cost) as the shuttle, with the long-term prospect of fixed ceiling budgets for the program and NASA as a whole, does not bode well for the future of the program.” Given this reality, “most Panel members feel that seri­ous consideration must be given to less costly programs which, while they provide considerably less advancement in space capability than the shuttle, still continue to maintain options for continuing manned spaceflight activ­ity, enlarge space operational capabilities, and allow for further progress in space technology.”

The 23-page summary of the committee’s views made a number of sage observations regarding the shuttle program and possible alternatives: [10]

a primary basis for deciding to undertake such an expensive and high-risk program. . . We believe that a decision to proceed with a program such as the space shuttle should be based on an assessment of new capabilities it would provide and whether they serve the national purpose to a degree sufficient to justify the costs.

• Prudent extrapolation of prior experience would indicate that estimated development costs may be 30 to 50 percent on the low side. In consid­eration of the technical and operational risks and uncertainties and the sensitivity of potential savings from the space shuttle system to the result­ing uncertainties in development, production, and operational costs, it is clear that there is little incentive to embark on the program if the aim is primarily to achieve the possible economic benefits. Rather, if the program is to be undertaken, it must be primarily for the purpose of acquiring new capabilities, aggressively pursuing new opportunities in space, and assuring continuing national leadership in space technology and space activity.12

It is not clear how widely these observations were known at the upper echelons in the White House or much influence they had on the shuttle decision process, although they certainly were incorporated into OMB and OST attitudes. The Flax committee had considered several alternatives to the full capability shuttle that “met to some degree the requirements for a continuing manned program and for further progress in space and space vehicle technology.” But NASA in its interactions with the committee took the position that none of the alternatives merited approval. The NASA posi­tion “effectively left only two alternatives for the next ten years: either (1) proceed with the shuttle now or soon, or (2) drop manned spaceflight activ­ity after Skylab A and the possible Salyut visit. . . Most of the Panel rejected these ‘all or nothing’ views.”13

The committee gave particular attention to three alternatives, although several others were briefly mentioned in Flax’s report. The three were:

1. To defer decision on the shuttle: “This alternative contemplates the pos­sibility that with further studies, analyses, and technology advance­ment, uncertainties and risks in the shuttle technical and cost areas can be reduced to a point of greater acceptability and that the national cli­mate for generating the requisite of commitment to the program may be improved over the next year or two.”

2. To develop a ballistic recovery system: – This approach would forego “tech­nological innovation in launch and recovery” by developing a spacecraft that would be launched, as had Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo, on an expendable launch vehicle and would return from orbit using parachutes to slow it for a water or land landing, rather than flying back to a run­way landing. The leading candidate was the “Big Gemini,” which was “billed as a growth version of the Gemini recovery capsule, but, which to all intents and purposes, is a new spacecraft design based on Gemini technology.” This new spacecraft could carry nine people to orbit and back, rather than the two-person crew during the mid-1960s Gemini program. Such an approach, thought the committee, “would be justified only if a slow-paced manned spaceflight program were contemplated (2 to 4 manned flights per year).”

3. To develop an unpowered but winged orbital vehicle, a “space glider Such a vehicle would have a much smaller cargo bay (10 x 20 feet rather than 15 x 60 feet) and less payload capacity (10,000 pounds versus 65,000 pounds) than the NASA-proposed shuttle. The space glider would be launched on an expendable booster, probably a ver­sion of the Titan III, and be able to return from orbit to a runway landing. The committee was positive in its view of the glider because such a vehicle “could provide a more convenient and lower cost means of recovering men from space missions; it would insure greater safety in unscheduled aborts from orbit; it would entail making progress in reentry vehicle technology. . . It would allow the acquisition of experi­ence in payload recovery, . . . maintenance, refurbishment and replenish­ment; and finally, it would lead to the accumulation of a body of data on the techniques and operational characteristics and costs of reusable orbital recovery vehicles.”14

As the Flax committee was carrying out its deliberations, NASA’s Fletcher and Low had met with Flax and, separately, Fubini, to get as much perspective as possible on the committee’s thinking, on the grounds that both the committee’s views and Fubini’s individual perspective “will have a lot to do with the kind of shuttle we will be able to sell to OMB.” In Low’s judgment, Flax was “in complete agreement with NASA’s position, but has a great deal of difficulty with the scientists on his committee,” while Fubini “is pushing strongly for a glider as opposed to an orbiter.” These meetings led to an October directive to manned space flight head Dale Myers that “he must study all of the alternatives in great detail so that those that are discarded will be discarded not through arm-waving, but through facts.” Myers and his space flight teams at the Manned Spacecraft Center and Marshall Space Flight Center were convinced that some form of large shuttle was the only reasonable path to pursue. Even after Low’s directive, they spent little time studying concepts such as the space glider or the “Big G,” which they did not believe were productive ways to pro­ceed. Myers would later comment “we probably were the guys that were dragging our feet.”15

The OMB decision memorandum on NASA’s program for President Nixon, revised on the basis of comments from various offices in the White House and Executive Office of the President, was ready on December 2.7 The memo began with a section on why decisions were needed:

• “The lead times are gone to decide what to do after Apollo.”

• “Industry wants decisions one way or the other, particularly on the Space Shuttle—on which contractors have been doing design studies for the last 18 months.”

• “Adjusting space spending and turning NASA’s capabilities to other domes­tic problems requires a 2-3 year phasing.” (This was an indication that a lead NASA role in William Magruder’s New Technology Opportunities effort was still a possibility.)

The eight-page memo both described NASA’s human space flight pro­gram as proposed in the agency’s September 30 budget request and OMB’s alternative. The alternative program included “a smaller and less costly Space Shuttle,” cancellation of Apollo 16 and 17 “because we understand that is your [Nixon’s] wish,” and “reduction in the size of NASA’s institutional base after calendar 1972.” With respect to NASA’s plans for the shuttle, OMB asked “since we already have the capability to put manned and unmanned payloads into earth orbit using expendable boosters, how much should we be willing to pay for a Shuttle?”

The memo noted “last year NASA was proposing a $10-$12 B [billion] Shuttle. In response to questions from OMB and OST about whether the benefits justified such a large investment, NASA has since designed a $6 B Shuttle which can do all the missions of the larger, more expensive one . . . (We think both costs are underestimated, perhaps by 50%.)” If NASA were given approval to develop the shuttle it was proposing, suggested OMB, “one pro­gram, the Shuttle, would dominate NASA for the coming decade, as did Apollo in the 1960’s.”

What OMB was proposing as a “smaller reduced cost” alternative to NASA’s shuttle would involve “an investment of $4-5 billion over the next 8 years.” Such a vehicle, OMB suggested, could “capture about 80% of the payloads of the redesigned larger Shuttle at about two-thirds of the investment cost.” By this time OMB had accepted that there would be a space shuttle program rather than a glider or some other alternative, and was focusing on keeping the shuttle as inexpensive as possible in investment terms; there was little attention given by either OMB or NASA to an exami­nation of shuttle operating costs, which in any event would be incurred after the Nixon administration left office. It would be necessary to “retain the reliable Titan III expendable booster to launch the few largest payloads that would not fit the smaller Shuttle. These include space telescopes and large intelligence satellites. (This may be desirable in any event since, for national security purposes, we may not want all our eggs in one basket.)” OMB added, reflecting the White House interest in California employment, that “we understand from NASA that the recently awarded engine contract with Rocketdyne division of North American Rockwell will probably be contin­ued for the smaller Shuttle without the need for recompetition.”

The OMB-proposed program also included three Earth orbital missions using launch vehicles and spacecraft left over from the Apollo program. Only one of these missions, the 1975 docking mission with a Soviet spacecraft, had been in NASA’s September 30 “minimum acceptable” budget proposal. The other two would be Earth resources survey missions that had been included in NASA’s September 30 “alternate recommended program,” which pre­sumed a higher budget level; OMB suggested them as a way of having one human spaceflight mission per year between 1974 and 1976, thereby avoid­ing a multiyear gap in U. S. human space flight activity. The smaller shuttle was anticipated to be ready for flight by 1978. With respect to Apollo 16 and 17, while the OMB alternative program canceled the missions on the basis that that was the president’s wish, the memo actually argued for retaining the missions. Saying “if concerns about complications during 1972 [Nixon’s already planned visits to China and the Soviet Union and the presidential election] can be alleviated by rescheduling Apollo 16, it would seem appro­priate to retain Apollo 16 and 17 for their scientific returns and employ­ment impacts.” OMB estimated that the employment impact of adopting its proposed alternative program would be 4,000 job losses by mid-1972 and 8,000 by the end of the year, but 30,000 by mid-1975. In OMB’s recom­mended program, the NASA budget for FY1973 would be $3.050 billion, declining to $2.975 billion by FY1976.

The “recommended next step” was for “OMB and OST to work with NASA on the reorientation of the space program.” The memorandum asked President Nixon to either “Approve” or “Disapprove” four actions:

1. “Initiate reduced-cost smaller Space Shuttle program.”

2. “Conduct Soviet docking mission.”

3. “Conduct other manned earth-orbital missions.”

4. “Apollo 16 and 17”

• “Cancel both missions”

• “Cancel just Apollo 16”

• “Reschedule Apollo 16 and fly both.”

Notably, OMB did not provide the president the option of approving NASA’s shuttle plans.

The OMB memorandum was discussed on December 3 as Ehrlichman, Shultz, and Cap Weinberger met with President Nixon at the Southern White House in Key Biscayne, Florida. There is no recording of the meeting, since Nixon had not set up a taping system in his office at Key Biscayne, but as was his custom Ehrlichman took notes.

With respect to Apollo 16 and 17, Nixon suggested that it would be better to combine the two missions after the 1972 election, but that his aides should “work it out.” Apollo 16 was scheduled for March 1972, but Nixon suggested moving the launch to April to avoid any possibility of its interfering with his planned 1972 trip to China. (Nixon went to China between February 21 and 28; the Apollo 16 mission was launched on April 16.) Nixon on November 24 had already approved going ahead with Apollo 17; with this discussion of rescheduling the Apollo 16 mission, the pos­sibility of canceling one or both of the missions, a long-held Nixon wish, disappeared.

With respect to OMB’s proposal for a smaller shuttle, Ehrlichman recorded Nixon’s response simply as “yes,” providing that the vehicle would use the “California engine.”8 The effect of Nixon saying “yes” to the smaller shuttle was to approve the recommendation that “OMB and OST proceed to work with NASA on a reorientation of the space program.” That process would take place during the rest of December.