Category After Apollo?

Fundamental to understanding how decisions were made with respect to space is thus the approach Richard Nixon took to assembling his senior White House staff. First in significance and power among Nixon’s immedi­ate associates was Harry Robbins “Bob” Haldeman, whom soon after the election Nixon designated as the White House chief of staff. Haldeman’s background was in advertising; he had worked for the giant advertising com­pany J. Walter Thompson for 20 years, taking time off during Nixon’s 1960 presidential and 1962 gubernatorial campaigns. Haldeman and his staff con­trolled all papers flowing into and out of the Oval Office and controlled access to the president for all but a very few individuals who had “walk-in rights.”28

Haldeman presented himself as being overridingly concerned with the process of making policy choices rather than their substance; he was dedicated to making sure that Nixon received all plausible policy options before reach­ing a decision. There was one important fact that Haldeman kept secret from Nixon—that he was compiling a detailed day-by-day account of the Nixon White House. He marked the daily entries “Top Secret” and stored them in a White House safe. Twenty years after leaving the White House under the cloud of the Watergate scandal, Haldeman, believing that his diary would “provide valuable insights for historians, journalists, and scholars,” decided to make it public. A book containing some 40 percent of the 750,000 words in the diaries was published in 1994, after Haldeman’s death.29

Although at the outset of the Nixon administration John Ehrlichman had a secondary role among the president’s advisors, during 1969 he quickly became together with Haldeman a powerful member of Richard Nixon’s inner circle. Ehrlichman was Bob Haldeman’s college classmate, then got a law degree, and began a successful practice in Seattle. He, like Haldeman, was a veteran of Nixon’s prior political campaigns. At the start of the Nixon administration, both Haldeman and Ehrlichman “were almost wholly ignorant of major national issues, the federal government, and politics in its broadest sense. . . That positions of such power and influence should be filled by men of such slight experience in public affairs” was described as “the single most extraordinary aspect of the early Nixon White House.”30

Of Nixon’s innermost circle, it was Ehrlichman who over the next few years would get most involved in space-related issues.

Haldeman, Ehrlichman, and other senior Nixon advisers acquired size­able staffs to assist them in their responsibilities. Many of these staff mem­bers were under 30 years in age—much more so than in previous White House staffs. They were chosen primarily for their “pugnacity and proven loyalty,” and were equally as inexperienced in actually managing the federal government as were Haldeman and Ehrlichman. During 1969 and 1970, a young staff assistant several layers down in the White House hierarchy, Clay Thomas “Tom” Whitehead, would have a great deal of influence in shaping decisions on post-Apollo space activities.

A third member of Nixon’s inner circle was his national security adviser, Henry Kissinger. His choice was somewhat surprising; Kissinger as a Harvard professor had long been a protege of New York governor and potential rival for the 1968 Republican presidential nominee Nelson Rockefeller. Nixon did not know Kissinger well before his election, but soon afterward the two met and found they thought along very similar lines with respect to international issues. Kissinger was quickly offered the national security advisor position and after consulting Rockefeller and others in the East Coast Republican establishment accepted Nixon’s invitation to join his administration.

The relationship between Nixon and his three senior advisers was strictly professional. Leonard Garment, one of Nixon’s law partners during the 1960s who came to Washington with Nixon in January 1969 and served in the White House through almost all of the Nixon administration, suggests that “the relationships among Haldeman, Ehrlichman, Kissinger, and Nixon were singularly devoted to the breeding and tending of power. They were not friends, not even a little. Indeed, if the members of Nixon’s German general staff shared an emotion, it was an intense dislike of Nixon, which he returned.” Garment notes that this “strange quartet” after 1969 was

increasingly able to centralize control over executive branch activities until the forces of Watergate scandal tore them apart.31

There was an important shift in the context within which the civilian space program was viewed by the Nixon administration compared to the approach since 1957; that earlier approach had seen space as primarily a for­eign policy and national security issue. The primary rationale for the kind of space program that the United States had pursued during the 1960s was as a peaceful symbol of national power and as a foreign policy tool in the Cold War U. S.-Soviet competition. While Nixon recognized the continu­ing foreign policy salience of space achievements, by the time he entered the White House he had concluded that more domestically oriented rationales for what the United States would do in space after Apollo, such as applying space capabilities to problems on Earth and seeing the space program as a stimulus to technological innovation and as a way of maintaining a qualified aerospace industrial and employment base, would have priority in shaping his space policy. The race to the Moon was on the verge of being won, and Nixon saw no compelling reason to continue the space program at a racing pace. By treating space as primarily a domestic rather than a national secu­rity and foreign policy issue, the Nixon administration changed the calculus by which the benefits of a post-Apollo space effort would be measured. It was thus individuals on the Nixon White House staff with responsibility for domestic policy issues who had particular influence on Richard Nixon’s space policy choices. This choice also meant that Nixon himself, who was far more interested in foreign policy than domestic issues, would view space policy as a matter of secondary concern.

The senior member of Nixon’s staff with direct oversight responsibility with respect to NASA was thus Assistant to the President Peter Flanigan. Flanigan’s other policy responsibilities were issues related to the U. S. finan­cial community and international trade, to the 15 independent regulatory agencies that were then part of the executive branch, and to other tech­nical government agencies like the National Science Foundation and the Atomic Energy Commission. At the outset of the Nixon administration, this position had been filled by former Congressman Robert Ellsworth. But Ellsworth had hoped for a more responsible position, and soon was ready to leave the White House to become ambassador to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. He was replaced in April 1969 by Flanigan, described by Ehrlichman as a “young prince of Wall Street.”32 Flanigan was an invest­ment banker and also a veteran of Nixon campaigns in 1960 and 1962. He had served the Nixon 1968 presidential campaign as its link to the financial community. As he assumed his White House position in April, Flanigan inherited from Ellsworth’s staff the previously mentioned Tom Whitehead as one of his staff; Whitehead was Flanigan’s primary assistant for NASA issues. Whitehead held a doctorate in management from MIT, where he had first majored in engineering. He during the 1960s had spent time at the Rand Corporation, a think-tank steeped in a systems analysis approach to assessing policy issues. Flanigan and Whitehead were to play key policy roles

in shaping the approach that the Nixon administration would take to the post-Apollo space program.

At the center of this small group of individuals sat Richard Nixon, “a loner, seated in an Oval Office as hushed and solemn as a hermitage.” Nixon designed his approach to governance to isolate himself “from the demands of the hated bureaucracy while ensuring that power was centralized in the White House.” Much of Nixon’s communication with his immediate staff was through notes he scribbled on the memorandums and on daily news summaries he read in the evenings as he sat alone. Nixon was an “improbable president” who “didn’t particularly like people. . . lacked charm or humor or joy,” and was “virtually incapable of small talk.” Nixon was “insecure, self-pitying, vindictive, suspicious. . . and filled with long-nursed anger and resentments.” This study will not probe deeply into the Nixon psyche. There are many other accounts of this “peculiar man” that analyze the way his per­sonality influenced his conduct as president; on occasion, however, it will be clear how some of his peculiarities affected his space decisions.33

Because Nixon and his advisers were unfamiliar with how the process of governing actually worked and suspicious of career government bureau­crats, they seem to have underestimated the importance of the “institutional presidency” lodged in the Executive Office of the President. With respect to space issues, the Bureau of the Budget (BOB) and the Office of Science and Technology (OST) were particularly important. While the president could appoint the heads of these offices, the staffs of both were career government employees, more dedicated to supporting the institution of the presidency than to supporting any particular president. In order to make sure that these offices served the priorities of a particular president, in this case Richard Nixon, the individuals he appointed to lead these offices had to be strong managers, able to transmit the president’s policy priorities to the permanent staff and able to see that they were reflected in specific recommendations and decisions. This did not happen at the start of the Nixon administration. Nixon selected as director of BOB a Chicago banker named Robert Mayo, whom he did not know. Mayo was suggested by Nixon’s nominee for sec­retary of the treasury, David Kennedy, another Chicago banker, for whom Mayo had worked. Mayo turned out to an individual with whom Nixon found it unpleasant to deal; he was a weak BOB director and would leave the administration in 1970. Nixon selected as his science advisor and director of OST Lee DuBridge, the retiring president of the prestigious California Institute of Technology. Nixon had known DuBridge for over 20 years, but he also soon discovered that DuBridge was neither a strong leader nor some­one to whom Nixon could turn for advice reflecting the president’s interests. By the end of 1969 DuBridge found himself increasingly marginalized in the policy process, and he too would leave the White House in 1970. But it was DuBridge and his OST staff and Mayo and his BOB staff who would join with Peter Flanigan and Tom Whitehead to deal with space issues on a continuing basis during 1969.

Paine led off the NASA presentation on August 4; he suggested that “Apollo 11 started a movement that will never end, a new outward movement in which man will go to the planets, first to explore, and then to occupy and utilize them.” He then turned the meeting over to von Braun, who described a “typical manned Mars mission,” which he claimed represented “no greater challenge than the commitment made in 1961 to land a man on the moon.” This was a remarkable (and unrealistic) claim, given the myriad technologi­cal challenges associated with a two-year flight into deep space. Because the opportunities for Mars missions could be identified with high accuracy, von Braun was able to use precise dates in presenting his mission profile. The round trip to Mars would take 640 days, departing Earth orbit on November 12, 1981, and returning on August 14, 1983. The mission would be carried out by two spacecraft, each carrying six astronauts (all male). After arriving at Mars, the spacecraft would remain in Martian orbit for 80 days. First making sure the Martian surface was safe for human presence, three crew members from each spacecraft would land for 30- to 60-day explor­atory sorties. The trip back to Earth would take 290 days and would include a swing by of Venus. After arrival back in Earth orbit, the crew and Martian samples would transfer to the space station, then be returned to Earth using space shuttles. Von Braun told the STG members that the plan he had out­lined could be carried out with a NASA budget peaking at $7 billion in 1975 and then leveling at $5 billion/year in the 1980s.31

Paine closed the presentation by saying “with the successful Apollo land­ing on the Moon, we know that man can lay claim to the planets for his use. We know further that man will do this; the question is, which nations and when?” He was less optimistic than von Braun about the costs of the program, suggesting that it would require “a budget rising to $9 to $10 bil­lion” in the second half of the 1970s. He suggested that “a commitment in principle to these achievements must be made now.”32

The FY1971 budget process had actually started six months earlier, when BOB Director Mayo on April 4 had indicated to NASA areas of particular interest to BOB with respect to upcoming budget decisions. These included

• “Should the U. S. undertake the development of a long duration manned orbital space station in the FY1971-73 period?”

• “Should a grand tour mission to the outer planets be undertaken in the next decade?”[4]

On May 23, Mayo added to these two areas for intensive study the issue of the Apollo launch rate—whether there should be one, two, or three launches to the Moon a year after the first successful lunar landing. The question of Apollo launch rate was of particular interest to a young analyst in BOB’s Office of Program Evaluation, Richard Speier; that office carried out special studies for BOB in support of its budgeting function. Speier was arguing within BOB that by limiting Apollo launches to one per year and by not only cancelling future production of the Saturn V launcher but also halting manufacture of the last two already approved Saturn Vs, there could be a budget savings of $1 billion in FY1971.10

During summer 1969, the budget process moved forward in its normal rhythm, independent of the activities of the STG. Mayo in a July 28 letter to Tom Paine gave NASA two budget targets for FY1971. One, the “official target,” was the maximum amount that would be available for NASA under the current fiscal outlook. This figure was $3.5 billion. In addition, NASA was told that in planning its future activities it should assume budgets of $3.5 billion per year for the next eight years, the anticipated tenure of the Nixon administration. This could hardly have been a welcome message for NASA, given that the agency at the same time was preparing to brief the STG on an ambitious program leading to an early Mars mission and requir­ing substantial budget increases in coming years.

NASA was also given an alternative target of $4.6 billion, with budget levels rising to $6 billion in subsequent years. This target was provided “as a means of indicating priorities at a higher resources level, in case subsequent events enable changes in current plans.” The large difference in the two tar­get figures was not all that unusual in the early stages of the budget process, since they bracketed what the BOB staff thought at the time was the most likely outcome, a NASA budget in the $3.7-$4.0 billion range.11

Even as the STG was finalizing its report, NASA budget examiners within BOB were preparing a lengthy critique of the report and an analysis of pos­sible NASA programs at four different budget levels, ranging from one pro­gram at $1.5 billion/year, two options at $2.5 billion/year, and one at $3.5 billon/year. The BOB staff characterized the draft STG report as “inad­equate as a basis for Presidential decision,” noting that the report assumed “a Presidential posture favoring rapid deployment of new manned space flight systems,” but that “the combination of Defense and domestic budget com­mitments with concomitant budget demands for the next 2 to 4 years may make such a space posture untenable.” The staff paper suggested that “the crucial problem with manned space flight is that no one is really prepared to stop manned space flight activity, and yet no defined manned project can compete on a cost-return basis with unmanned space flight systems. In addi­tion, missions that are designed around man’s unique capabilities appear to have little demonstrable economic or social return to atone for their high costs. Their principle [sic] contribution is that each manned flight paves the way for more manned flight.”12

In his press conference after the March 7 release of the presidential space statement, NASA Administrator Paine tried to put a positive spin on the document, calling the program that the president had announced “bold, diversified, very wide ranging.” But Paine in a rare note of realism did rec­ognize the challenge of reorienting NASA to new objectives, saying “what we are really faced here in this change as President Nixon’s space program replaces the old space program of the 60’s is we are essentially taking a $3.5 billion enterprise which has been going in one direction, a very single­minded purpose, and completely changing it around and moving in a new direction. That is a tough job.”1

The reality—that a new direction was needed and that it was not going to be based on accepting the recommendations of the Space Task Group (STG)—sank in fairly quickly. As it defended its FY1971 budget request to the Congress in spring 1970 NASA was publicly persisting in its hope to develop simultaneously both the space shuttle and the space station, present­ing them as a single, inseparable “station/shuttle” program. NASA also told the Congress that it intended to launch seven more Apollo lunar landing missions, Apollo 13-19. But even as these programs were being justified, to mixed Congressional reaction, behind the scenes the NASA leadership was beginning to recognize that there was essentially no possibility of get­ting the budget allocations over the next several years needed to support the agency’s ambitions. Something would have to give, and over the sum­mer of 1970, that “something” became both abandoning plans to develop the space station and the space shuttle in parallel and canceling two of the six Apollo missions remaining after Apollo 13 was launched on its fateful flight in April 1970. By the time NASA submitted its budget request for Fiscal Year 1972 in September 1970, the only major new program for which the space agency was seeking approval was the space shuttle. In a little over 12 months, the shuttle had transitioned from a necessary complement to the top-priority space station to the single large program on which NASA was staking its future. The totality of the changes in the NASA program made during the first nine months of 1970 added up to the end of the Apollo era

in NASA’s history, even though four more Apollo launches to the Moon would take place in 1971 and 1972, a Skylab orbital workshop based on Saturn V hardware would be launched in 1973 and visited by three astronaut crews using Apollo spacecraft, and an Apollo spacecraft would rendezvous and dock with a Soviet spacecraft in 1975. After those missions, there would be no more use of the launchers and spacecraft developed for Apollo. Unless NASA could get presidential approval for the space shuttle, the U. S. human space flight program would come to an end.

Once Apollo H had been successful in achieving the goal of a lunar land­ing before the end of the 1960s, Wernher von Braun had considered his work as director of the Marshall Space Flight Center completed, and during fall 1969 expressed to George Low “a strong interest” in moving to NASA Headquarters in Washington. Von Braun was burned out from his intensive efforts in getting the Saturn V ready for Apollo missions, and he and his wife, both raised as Prussian aristocrats, were ready to leave the rather provincial Huntsville, Alabama for life in Washington. Low and NASA Administrator Paine decided not to offer von Braun a headquarters line management posi­tion, but rather to invite him to become NASA’s chief planner, supervising a “strong, but small staff,” with the goal of “putting some imagination back into the future plans of the agency.” In this role, von Braun would be both the “chief architect” of and “salesman” for the future NASA program. Von Braun indicated that he was “most interested in undertaking this assign­ment.” He assumed his new position on March 1, 1970.10

An early von Braun project was to organize a long-range planning con­ference called by Paine. The purpose of the three-day conference was “to provide a long-term context against which current decisions can be tested” by expanding on the Space Task Group (STG) recommendations, which had focused on the 1970s and 1980s, to the year 2000. Paine invited visionary futurist Arthur C. Clarke to provide the keynote address for the get-together.

Paine’s hope was that the combination of extending the time frame for con­sideration of space options and exposing his staff to Clarke’s often far out thinking would result in a NASA long-range plan that could capture public and political imagination.11

The meeting took place on June 11-14. Paine’s concluding remarks to the conference capture his exuberant personality, his fascination with things naval, and his lack of understanding, or perhaps acceptance, of the policy context in which NASA was operating in mid-1970. He urged his associates to adopt “a fighting ship analogy for the kind of society, the kind of ratio­nale, actions, courage, and determination that we in NASA should have in the coming decades.” Paine added “we need the discipline and determina­tion and capability of a naval fighting ship,” but that NASA should adopt a “swashbuckling, buccaneering, privateering kind of approach.” He sug­gested that NASA should emulate “the concept of Admiral Nelson and his band of brothers, which certainly was one of the great management teams of all times.” Paine added “we have got to enjoy the experience of living dangerously because that is really the only way to handle the kind of cam­paigns we are going to be waging.”12 This was certainly not the image of NASA that the White House had in mind as it tried to constrain the space agency’s ambitions. Paine’s exhortation to enjoy “living dangerously” was very likely to lead NASA, to continue the naval analogy, to crash on rocky shores.

In addition to his bullish long-range vision, Paine apparently had in his back pocket a short-term proposal for a major new initiative. Even as the STG was winding up its work the preceding September, NASA’s Milt Rosen had suggested to Paine that he should seek “a commitment to have a permanent manned space-station in earth orbit in 1976” as a means of marking the two hundredth anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. This proposal was not mentioned during the FY1971 budget discussions, as NASA fought for the program laid out in the STG report, but it was also not forgotten. In mid-June 1970, as NASA planned its FY1972 budget request, Paine was arguing within NASA that “it is extremely important that in 1976 a major mission of new significance be considered.” The leading possibility was a “first” space station that would be an advance beyond the Skylab orbital workshop, would have potential for up to ten years in orbit, and would make possible “participation by foreign astronauts or scientists.” This “’76 spec­tacular” would be “a source of national pride.”13

Apollo astronaut Jim Lovell called Peter Flanigan in July 1970, asking “if the Administration was looking for a space spectacular in 1976.” Flanigan told Lovell that he had once suggested a change in the NASA schedule “in order to provide a meaningful launch just prior to the 1972 election,” but that President Nixon had said that “he was not interested in this kind of grandstanding.” Flanigan told Lovell “based on this. . . the Administration was not trying to design a space spectacular for 1976.” This word may have gotten back to NASA planners; at any rate, the idea of a NASA mission tied to the country’s bicentennial was not pursued.14

Paine in early July wrote the president, requesting an appointment to discuss the results of the long-range planning conference. Paine stressed that the purpose of the meeting “was not to discuss budgetary or detailed programming actions, or to review decisions,” but rather “to give you a heretofore unavailable Presidential level long range view of man’s future potential in space.”15 As the White House considered whether to schedule such a meeting, the first anniversary of the Apollo 11 lunar landing on July 20 passed without any major celebration. One NASA idea had been a live television conference involving President Nixon and other heads of state, with Armstrong, Aldrin, and Collins standing by. The White House did issue a presidential statement, saying “this triumph of unique achievement, described by our first man on the moon, Neil Armstrong, as ‘one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind,’ brought with it a moment of great­ness in which we all shared, a priceless moment when the people of this earth became truly one in the joy and wonder of a dream realized.”16 But there was no White House desire to stage an event intended to recapture the excite­ment surrounding the first lunar landing or to encourage the agency to push for the kind of future Paine had in mind.

Even before Apollo 11 lifted off, the crew and mission planners back in Houston had agreed that if all was going well, Armstrong and Aldrin would skip their scheduled rest period and start their extra-vehicular activity on the lunar surface as soon as they were ready. Within an hour after landing, Armstrong received permission to begin the crew’s moonwalk at approxi­mately 9:00 p. m. Informed of this change in plans, President Nixon arrived in the White House office area just before 9:00 p. m., only to be advised that preparations were running more slowly than expected. Almost two hours later, Armstrong stood on the outside of the lunar module, ready to climb down to the surface of the Moon. A worldwide audience watched his ghost-like image descend the module’s ladder; then, Armstrong announced that he was ready to step off the lunar module. He took his historic “one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind” at 10:56 p. m. on July 20, 1969. (In the excitement of the moment, Armstrong did not fully articulate the “a” in his statement, although some later acoustic analyses suggested that he had indeed included the article in what he said. In retro­spect, Armstrong himself was typically enigmatic, saying to his biographer “I would hope that history would grant me leeway for dropping the syl­lable and understand that it was certainly intended, even if it wasn’t said— and it actually might have been.28) Aldrin soon followed Armstrong to the lunar surface, stepping off the lunar module at 11:15 p. m.

President Nixon watched the historic first steps on the Moon on a small television in his private office in the White House, next to the more for­mal Oval Office. Borman and Haldeman were with him. According to Haldeman, Nixon was “very excited by the whole thing. Was fascinated by the moon walk.” The president then went into the Oval Office, where from 11:45 to 11:50 p. m., in the dispassionate words of the his official “Daily Diary,” he “held an interplanetary conversation with the Apollo 11 astro­nauts Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin on the Moon.” The conversation was shown on split-screen television and seen live around most of the world, but not in the Soviet Union.29

Nixon had available to him for this conversation two different versions of prepared remarks, one written by lead speechwriter Ray Price and the other by William Safire, but he used neither version. Borman says that he and Safire composed the actual comments, while Haldeman suggests that Nixon “wrote his own remarks.” Safire recalls that he was watching the preparations for the moonwalk from his home and was struck by the idea that the president should work the theme of “tranquility” into his remarks, given that Eagle had landed on the Moon’s Sea of Tranquility. Safire called the White House and asked that his thought be relayed to the president as he prepared for his Apollo 11 phone call. Whatever the source of the rhetoric, what the president said reflected the themes—pride, power, and peace—that Nixon had from the start of his preparations wanted to associate with the lunar landing. Nixon told Armstrong and Aldrin as they stood beside the American flag on the lunar surface:

Hello Neil and Buzz, I am talking to you by telephone from the Oval Room at the White House, and this certainly has to be the most historic telephone call ever made from the White House.

I just can’t tell you how proud we all are of what you have done. For every American this has to be the proudest day of our lives, and for people all over the world I am sure that they, too, join with Americans in recognizing what an immense feat this is.

Because of what you have done the heavens have become a part of man’s world, and as you talk to us from the Sea of Tranquility, it inspires us to redouble our efforts to bring peace and tranquility to earth.

For one priceless moment in the whole history of man all the people on this earth are truly one—one in their pride in what you have done and one in our prayers that you will return safely to earth.

Armstrong replied to the president: “It is a great honor and privilege for us to be here representing not only the United States, but men of peaceable nations, men with an interest and a curiosity, and men with a vision for the future.”30

The president’s phone call came as a complete surprise to Aldrin, who found it “awkward” and decided not to respond. Armstrong had been alerted before launch that there might be a “special communication” while the two astronauts were on the Moon, but he was not told that it would be

President Nixon on the line. Armstrong did not share this “heads up” with Aldrin. Armstrong later suggested that “If I’d known it was going to be the president, I might of tried to conjure up some appropriate statement.” Armstrong’s not sharing his advance information with Aldrin was typical of the relationship between the members of the Apollo 11 crew, described by Collins as “amiable strangers.”31

On the morning of July 21, the front page of the The New York Times in a 96-point banner headline announced “Men Walk on Moon.” (In the early edition of the paper, sent to press before Aldrin had joined Armstrong on the lunar surface, the headline had been singular—“Man Walks on Moon.”) The newspaper also included on its front page the poem Archibald MacLeish had composed to commemorate the occasion, titled “Voyage to the Moon.”32

Eagle with Armstrong and Aldrin and 49 pounds of lunar samples aboard lifted off of the Moon’s surface at 1:54 p. m. on July 21, first to rendezvous in lunar orbit with Columbia, where Collins had been patiently waiting, and then to head back for an early morning splashdown in the South Pacific on July 24. The crew had little to do on the return trip, and reverted to charac­teristics that Borman had noted in his July 14 memo to Nixon. Armstrong asked mission control for a report on the stock market, and Collins rum­maged around the various storage areas of the spacecraft, hoping, with tongue in cheek, that someone had surreptitiously smuggled aboard a small supply of cognac.33

There were both parallels and differences with respect to the status of the space program at the time John F. Kennedy entered the White House in January 1961 and the arrival of Richard M. Nixon eight years later. Both men as presidential candidates had spoken of the importance of U. S. space leadership. Both had commissioned a transition task force on space that had been skeptical regarding a presidential commitment to a major new space effort, especially one involving human space flight. During both transitions, NASA had ambitious plans for the future, but also was operating with high uncertainty with respect to whether the new man in the White House would embrace those ambitions. NASA at the start of both the Kennedy and the Nixon administrations was being led by an acting administrator, and the new president was having difficulty in finding a person to head the space agency on a permanent basis. In both 1961 and 1968, the new president faced important decisions in his first months in office with respect to the future of the U. S. space effort.

A major difference in the two situations was that while in January 1961 the United States was still four months away from the launch of its first astronaut, Alan Shepard, on a 15-minute suborbital flight, in January 1969 NASA had just sent three astronauts around the Moon and was preparing to make the initial attempt to land Americans on the lunar surface. Once the lunar landing was achieved, there was no clear next step for human space flight. Without such new missions, the U. S. program of human space flight would come to an end in the 1973-1975 period, after Apollo lunar landings missions through Apollo 20 had been carried out and astronaut visits to an already approved orbital workshop based on Apollo hardware, later named Skylab, were completed. At the time of the Kennedy transition, NASA was a relatively small organization with a modest contractor support network; in 1969, as a result of the Apollo buildup, NASA had over 34,000 employees supported by over 200,000 contractors from the aerospace industry. Deciding what to do with this “space industrial complex” and the capabilities it rep­resented was a rather more difficult problem for the Nixon administration than John F. Kennedy had faced as he decided to race to the Moon.

Even before this presentation to the STG, Agnew’s call at the Apollo 11 launch for sending Americans to Mars had quickly produced a variety of negative reactions. Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield (D-MT) said that he would rule out any such venture “until problems here on earth are solved.” He was joined in his criticism by Senator Edward Kennedy (D-MA).

Both Mansfield and especially Kennedy were already on record as opposing a high priority for post-Apollo space efforts. Even more telling was the skepti­cism of NASA’s traditional supporters. Senator Clinton Anderson (D-NM), chair of the Senate’s Committee on Aeronautical and Space Sciences, on July 29 said “now is not the time to commit ourselves to the goal of a manned mission to Mars.” On August 11, Anderson’s counterpart in the House of Representatives, George Miller (D-CA), chairman of the House Committee on Science and Astronautics, called the setting of a Mars goal “premature,” suggesting that “five, perhaps ten years from now we may decide that it would be in the national interest to begin a carefully planned program extending over several years to send men to Mars.” The members of Congress were joined in their criticism by The New York Times, which as the Apollo H spacecraft was on its way to the Moon called discussion of a Mars mission “scientifically and technically. . . premature” and warned with some degree of hyperbole that “any forced-draft Martian analogue of the Apollo project would divert hundreds of billions of dollars that are more urgently required to meet the needs of men and women on earth.” The general public also was skeptical. In a nationwide poll taken just after the Apollo H mission, respondents were asked: “There has been much discussion about attempt­ing to land a man on the planet Mars. How would you feel about such an attempt—Would you favor or oppose the United States setting aside money for such a project?” Of those queried, 53 percent opposed a Mars mission; only 39 percent supported it. President Nixon was an avid consumer of poll data; this kind of response is likely to have caught his attention as he weighed his decisions on future space efforts.33

Even Paine, while still pushing for the kind of vigorous program he thought NASA should undertake, was by the time of the August 4 STG meeting sensing that commitment to an early mission to Mars was not in the cards. Using von Braun’s presentation material, he had made two speeches in the first days of August about a Mars mission. He described the speeches as “trial ballooning a little bit to see what kind of comment there would be to discussions of how a Mars mission could be carried out.” From these speeches “came the first rumblings of a public reaction, which was that those trial balloons were going to be shot down, and that Mars was not going to be the thing we were going to hang the program on, that the idea ‘after the Moon, Mars’ was too simplistic a view. We have to come up with a better program rationale than Jack Kennedy sent us to the Moon, Dick Nixon sent us to Mars.”34 Even so, Paine continued to push hard for a STG report that would recommend setting Mars missions during the 1980s as a national goal, primarily as a way for gaining support for NASA’s ambitious plans in the 1970s.

NASA Administrator Paine in August had told his NASA colleagues to pre­pare a budget reflecting what became Option I in the STG report; the result­ing requests totaled $5.4 billion. Paine’s reaction was that these requests “far exceed the dollar level that can be reasonably expected.” At this point, NASA’s internal budget process was in “disarray,” with “Apollo euphoria” prevalent and Paine and other senior NASA officials concentrating on the STG process.13

In submitting the NASA budget request of $4.5 billion, Paine character­ized it as consistent with Option II of the STG report, the choice he had recommended to the president. Paine also reminded Mayo that the official $3.5 billion target had been “issued prior to the Task Group’s report and recommendations.” If that budget level were forced on NASA, said Paine, “major program decisions totally inconsistent with the Task Group’s recom­mendations” would be needed, including “immediate decisions on terminat­ing manned flight operations.”14 This was the first of several times during the budget review when NASA claimed that there would be drastic conse­quences with respect to human space flight if its budget was reduced, only to find ways of avoiding those consequences when it was forced to accept a lower budget.

Over the next month, the BOB space budget examiners reviewed the NASA request. They initially thought that NASA was likely to end up with a budget at the $3.7-$3.9 billion level, but they were directed by Robert Mayo in “strong words” to keep the budget at $3.5 billion. Driving Mayo’s action was Richard Nixon’s focus on balancing the budget in the face of continu­ing inflation and the end of the tax surcharge that had been in place to help pay for the costs of the Vietnam war, even as the conflict continued. The fiscal outlook was much less optimistic in October than it had been only a few months earlier; the president’s policies were not producing the desired results in terms of controlling inflation and stimulating economic growth and increased federal revenues.

To reduce the NASA request by $1 billion, the BOB staff made “meat-axe cuts.” There was no coherent rationale behind these cuts, but even so the staff composed a paper, delivered to NASA on November 13, that attempted to explain the reasoning behind the BOB’s “tentative allowance” of $3.5 bil­lion for FY1971. At this budget level, there would be only one Apollo launch per year. Saturn V production would be “suspended”; production capabili­ties would be mothballed, to be restarted if additional launch vehicles sub­sequently were needed. Additional research on space shuttle technologies would be required before detailed design and development of the vehicle would be approved. Space station development was deferred.15

In a strongly worded November 18 letter, Paine told Mayo that “the allowance and rationale are both unacceptable,” since they failed to support “even the minimal requirements of a balanced forward-looking U. S. space program.” He added that “the proposed rationale ignores and runs counter to the conclusions reached by the Space Task Group. . . By refusing to rec­ognize the need for a planning rationale and by undercutting existing com­mitments, the BOB staff proposals would force the President to reject the space program as an important continuing element of his Administration’s total program.” Paine reiterated his argument that a NASA budget of less than $4 billion/year “would require decisions to suspend manned flights.” He closed his missive by expressing “his disappointment that at this point in the budget process so much effort has been expended and so little accom – plished.”16

Paine and Mayo and their relevant staffs met on November 21 to discuss their differences, but according to one of those present “it was a fairly short meeting and quite—you would not say bitter—but it broke fairly quickly because we couldn’t accommodate anything”; according to another partici­pant, “Paine went away angry.” Paine and Mayo did agree that being so far apart so late in the budget process was not a good situation, and directed their staff members to work together to try to narrow the differences.17

There was some movement over the next few days. NASA developed four new budget alternatives, ranging from $4.4 to $3.9 billion, but Paine insisted that in order to make “meaningful forward progress on the key space station and space shuttle programs without sacrificing key elements of the balanced STG program,” a budget of $4.25 billion was the lowest that he and Mayo should “responsibly recommend to the President.” Paine con­tinued to use the STG report as his basis for the president’s budget decisions; he suggested to Mayo that “your job and my job” was to help Nixon “redi­rect America’s space efforts into the forward looking course charted by the Space Task Group.” NASA’s consistent strategy, whatever budget level was finally approved, was to keep in the budget some meaningful funding for the station/shuttle combination that was key to post-Apollo human flights. To do this, said Paine, “if we must sacrifice current important programs—like Saturn V production—so be it.”18

At this point in the budget process, normal practice called for the BOB director to meet with the president to make his recommendations on budget level and associated issues and to explain to the president the areas where these recommendations were not accepted by the affected agency. The agency head was not to be present; he would be given a chance to appeal the president’s tentative decisions once they were communicated to him. The Nixon-Mayo meeting took place on the afternoon of December 5. Also present at the meeting was John Ehrlichman and, for the portion of the meeting dealing with NASA, Peter Flanigan.

There was one problem lurking in the background of the meeting—by this time, Richard Nixon had discovered that he “just plain did not like Mayo” and did not relish dealing with the BOB director, whose “manner­isms and odd sense of humor thoroughly alienated the President.” This dislike was shared by Ehrlichman and Flanigan, and colored the relations between Nixon’s White House staff and the BOB through the remainder of the budget deliberations, with the two parties not communicating well and often working at cross purposes. By the time of his meeting with the presi­dent, Mayo had increased his recommended FY1971 budget for NASA to $3.7 billion; this figure included launching two Apollo missions a year and continuing Saturn V production.19

All of these final Apollo missions used equipment already in production by 1970. The ability to produce more Apollo spacecraft and Saturn launchers would soon be abandoned.

No More Saturn V Launchers

NASA in July 1969 had awarded 11-month contracts to study the preliminary design of a Saturn V-launched space station to leading aerospace companies North American Rockwell and McDonnell Douglas. The space agency had set the parameters for the studies based on George Mueller’s integrated plan. The initial station module was to be 33 feet in diameter, the size of the first and second stages of the Saturn V booster that would be used to launch it. This “core module” would be able to support a 12-person crew and have a ten-year lifetime; it was to be the first step on a path to having an increasing number of humans living and working in space.

The FY1971 budget decision to suspend for an indefinite period produc­tion of the Saturn V cast an immediate pall over this plan. NASA would need one Saturn V to launch the initial module, and additional boosters if the subsequent low-Earth orbit infrastructure buildup contemplated in the STG report were to be pursued. However, the seven remaining Saturn V vehicles of the original 15 ordered at the start of Apollo were already committed to the six remaining Apollo missions after Apollo 13 and to Skylab, and pros­pects for restarting Saturn V production in a few years appeared dim.

As noted in chapter 2, the process of shutting down the production line for the Saturn V had begun in 1968, even before Richard Nixon had arrived at the White House. Then-NASA Administrator James Webb had rejected a request to begin procuring long lead-time equipment for a next production run of the Saturn V on the grounds that there was no approved requirement for those additional launchers. The Saturn V had received a brief reprieve in early 1969 as the STG recommended adding the funding to NASA’s FY1970 budget needed to keep the production line open in order to preserve President Nixon’s option to approve an ambitious post – Apollo space program. That decision had been reversed in the December 1969 budget negotiations; Tom Paine had chosen to sacrifice funding for additional Saturn Vs in order to obtain White House approval for funds to study the space station and space shuttle. The FY1971 presidential budget proposed “suspending” Saturn V production, with the idea that produc­tion could be restarted if additional heavy-lift boosters were needed in the future.

By mid-June 1970 NASA Deputy Administrator George Low concluded that restarting Saturn V production was an unrealistic hope, given NASA’s budget outlook. This meant that the only way to have the massive boosters available to launch the initial large space station module or a second Skylab mission was to cancel one or more Apollo missions and use the Saturn V boosters assigned to those missions for those launches. Low judged that NASA would “not get the amount of funding we anticipate in 1972 or 1973” and that “there seems to be a disenchantment in America and particularly in Congress with additional flights to the moon.” Low discussed his ideas on canceling one or more Apollo missions with Tom Paine, who “originally was very negative,” but upon reflection “talked about this in a much more positive vein.”2 The final decision that NASA would not retain the industrial capability required to restart Saturn V production was not made until 1972, but by mid-1970 it was virtually certain that there would be no more of the Moon rockets produced. With this decision, the United States gave up for decades to come its capability to launch astronauts for voyages beyond the immediate vicinity of Earth.