Category After Apollo?

As he accepted Paine’s resignation on July 28, President Nixon asked him to suggest potential successors. Paine replied quickly, telling Nixon that “it would be best to seek a replacement from outside” of NASA; this ruled out George Low and Wernher von Braun as candidates. Paine provided a list “of seven principal candidates of national stature.” They were: James Fisk, president, Bell Telephone Laboratories; Thomas Jones, chairman, Northrop Corporation; Ruben Mettler, president, TRW Systems; Howard Johnson, president, MIT; Charles Townes, University of California, Berkeley; Frank Borman, who was in the process of leaving NASA; and George H. W. Bush, then a member of the House of Representatives and a candidate for the Senate from Texas (and a future president). Paine’s personal recommenda­tion was to select Borman, who was “the right age and temperament,” would “add technical experience and charisma to your administration,” could “deal effectively with the Congress,” would “be received with enthusiasm by NASA and the press,” and “can do an outstanding job maintaining the momentum in securing increased cooperation in space.”22

Flanigan added several other names to Paine’s list. One was Roger Lewis, chief executive officer of General Dynamics. He asked several people, including science adviser DuBridge, General Bernard Schriever, and Donald Kendall of Pepsi Cola, a Nixon confidant, to evaluate the various candi­dates. Flanigan tried to persuade Paine to remain in his job until a successor could be confirmed, but Paine said that this was not possible, and that in his judgment George Low was “entirely competent to manage the Agency for two months.” Flanigan reported to the president that, after first being interested in the NASA position, Borman had “indicated a change of heart, saying that he had no great interest in the job.” Even so, Flanigan was sure that “Borman would take the job if he knew you [Nixon] wanted him to have it.” Flanigan added that “much as I would like to see the position held for George Bush should he not win in Texas, I have serious reservations about leaving it unfilled for two months,” since this might be interpreted as indicating that “NASA and the Space Program were not important to the Administration. Given the current condition of the space industry, this would be an unfortunate inference.” Donald Kendall and Nixon assistant Leonard Garment knew Roger Lewis and indicated that “he appears to be an exceedingly able individual and would make an excellent spokesman for NASA and the Administration.” Based on this assessment, Flanigan recom­mended offering the NASA job to Lewis.23

It is not clear from the available record whether that recommendation was accepted and Roger Lewis rejected the offer, or whether action was deferred.

At any rate, Lewis was not nominated, and a month later, Flanigan was still seeking ideas for people to become NASA administrator.24 Paine left NASA on September 15, 1970; the next day, George Low became NASA’s act­ing administrator. Rather than being only a short-term replacement, Low would serve in that role for the next eight months. It fell to him to take the next steps in defining the program that NASA would pursue in the 1970s, particularly in terms of the negotiations with respect to NASA’s FY1972 budget. In taking on that responsibility, Low would be dealing with a mix of new and continuing members of the Nixon White House. His style was very different than that of Tom Paine, but he had little more success than Paine in getting the kind of commitment to a major future program that NASA so badly wanted.

Although both NASA and the White House certainly expected that at some point after their mission the Apollo 11 crew would embark on an interna­tional tour, there were no concrete plans for such a junket in place at the time of the Apollo 11 gala dinner. One characteristic of the Nixon White House evident early on was the intent to exercise close control over executive agency activities of direct interest to the president; there was little trust in the career bureaucracy. By early August, the White House was becoming increasingly impatient to hear from NASA regarding plans for the Apollo 11 tour. On August 6, three days after the president returned from his round-the-world trip, Nixon’s assistant Peter Flanigan wrote to NASA’s Julian Scheer, saying “No doubt you will be arranging for international trips for the Apollo 11 astronauts.” Flanigan requested that “before any specific schedule has been agreed upon, we would appreciate an opportunity to have the chief scheduler sit down here at the White House with the appropriate members of the White House, the National Security Council and the State Department [so] that we can coordinate the proposed schedule.” Five days later, Flanigan again wrote Scheer, this time saying “the President has again asked that he person­ally have an opportunity to review the Apollo 11 astronauts’ foreign travels. He has some strong opinions on this matter and wants to make sure he can express those opinions before any commitments are made.” Flanigan added “he is also anxious that there be some movement along this line, so I would appreciate hearing NASA’s thoughts with regard to the schedule in the near future.” On August 14, Nixon told Haldeman that the White House should control the tour schedule, with “no countries included w/o WH [without White House] approval.” As a result, Flanigan on August 15 wrote NASA administrator Paine, saying “the President is most anxious that the Apollo 11 astronauts commence their world-wide trip as soon as possible.”42

On August 15, the same day that Flanigan wrote Paine, Scheer finally replied, sending Flanigan a plan for the crew in the United States, to include an appearance before a joint session of Congress, as well as suggested “opera­tional guidelines for the overseas tour” and a proposed itinerary. Scheer noted that the plan was put together “with the guidance of U. Alexis Johnson of the Department of State.” Johnson was a veteran diplomat, then undersecretary of state for political affairs, who had long involvement in space policy mat­ters and was at the time part of the White House review of post-Apollo space plans. With respect to the proposed itinerary, Scheer noted that “it was more than advisable: 51 days, 28 countries and 30 cities. We would like to reduce this by 10 days.” With respect to the trip’s guidelines, Scheer suggested that “the Apollo 11 astronauts represent the President on a Presidential ‘Spirit of Apollo’ world trip.” He noted that “a Presidential aircraft, such as Air Force 2/3, is important for image purposes overseas.” Scheer proposed that

NASA supply both the “Chief of Mission” and the “Mission Director,” with a supporting staff of 11 additional NASA people; there would be four people from the U. S. Information Agency and only one from the Department of State in the traveling party.43

Little in what NASA was proposing was acceptable to the White House, which wanted a “highly political and carefully choreographed” tour designed to “reward friends, snub foes” and to produce “a flood of positive foreign headlines.” Nixon, reflecting his August 14 decision to take over from NASA the responsibility for planning the astronaut trip, told Kissinger “if you leave things in their [government bureaucrats] hands like this, they come out with an utter disaster.” Flanigan told Scheer on August 23 that “the President was dismayed at the proposed foreign schedule for the astronauts,” believing that “it went to too many countries, many of which were unimportant, while leaving out others of considerably greater importance.” Flanigan announced to NASA in no uncertain terms that “the President has given the White House staff the responsibility for reconstructing this schedule” and that “as soon it is completed it will be sent to you.” To make sure his point was clear, Flanigan added “Please be sure that all interested parties know that this is now a White House responsibility.”44

On August 26, completing the White House takeover of the trip plan­ning, Flanigan informed Administrator Paine that the astronauts would indeed “tour the world as his [the President’s] representatives.” Rather than NASA managing the tour, Nicholas Ruwe, a senior Department of State protocol officer, was designated “Chief of Mission” and would be “respon­sible to the President for its successful completion.” Both NASA and the State Department would provide staff, but only “as requested by the White House.”45

NASA was not at all pleased by the White House intervention in the tour arrangements; tension between Scheer, particularly, and the White House ran high. Ruwe on September 23, a week before the tour was to commence, reported to Kissinger “NASA and I are at complete loggerheads with regard to the execution of the Apollo 11 trip.” Dissatisfaction with tour planning extended to Armstrong, Aldrin, and Collins themselves. On September 17, the day after they had addressed a joint session of Congress, the three were briefed at the State Department with respect to tour preparations. The astro­nauts had set as their objectives for the trip “to demonstrate goodwill to all people in the world and to stress that what we had done was for all man­kind.” According to Aldrin, they were not impressed when they perceived from their briefing that an important objective of the tour was “to visit the American embassies anxious to score social coups.” The crew’s response was “we would take care of Americans in America.”46

The Apollo H tour was code-named “Giant Step.” It departed on September 29, with the first stop being Mexico City. The day before, Nixon, reflecting his personal concern that the tour serve his broader purposes, called Armstrong to give him some final thoughts. Using talking points prepared by Borman, Nixon urged Armstrong to convey to the leaders in each of the countries visited that the Apollo 11 flight and the astronauts’ tour represented “the interest of the United States in maintaining space explora­tion as a project of peaceful benefits for all nations of the world.” He sug­gested that Armstrong might repeat what the president had said during his post-mission trip—that “the success of the Apollo XI mission belongs to all the people of the earth and not just the people of the United States.”47

The crew visited 27 cities in 24 countries over 39 days. They returned to Washington on November 5. Neil and Jan Armstrong and Mike and Pat Collins enjoyed most of the exhausting trip; Collins remembers that “despite the fatigue and the repetitive nature of the ceremonies,” the tour “was the rarest of opportunities, to cram in slightly over a month’s time visits with the Queen of England, Marshal Tito, the Pope, the Emperor of Japan, the Shan of Iran, Generalissimo Franco, Badouin King of the Belgians, King Olaf of Norway, Queen Wilhemina of the Netherlands, the King and Queen of Thailand, and dozens of Presidents, Prime Ministers, ambassadors, and lesser lights.” In contrast, Buzz Aldrin found the trip extremely stressful, and became increasingly depressed as the tour continued; he and his wife were at times not on speaking terms.48

When the crew arrived back in Washington, they went by helicopter directly to the South Lawn of the White House. There they were welcomed by President Nixon, speaking “for all of the American people in expressing the heartfelt thanks of this Nation to the Armstrongs, the Aldrins, and the Collinses for what I think is the most successful goodwill trip in the history of the United States of America. . . Certainly the first men ever to land on the moon have demonstrated that they are the best possible ambassadors America could have on this earth.” That evening, President and Mrs. Nixon hosted a White House dinner; the only other people present were the crew members and their wives. Aldrin remembers a “friendly, warm evening.” The president told the crew that he had used his stop in Romania in his around-the-world tour to send a secret message to China’s leaders that he was open to normal­izing U. S.-Chinese relations and said that opportunity had “paid for every­thing we spent on the space program.” He asked each crew member what they wanted to do next. While Armstrong and Aldrin were non-committal, Collins expressed interest in continuing work in public diplomacy. In a con­versation with NASA Administrator Paine even before leaving on the “Giant Step” tour, Collins had learned that Secretary of State Rogers had expressed interest in Collins becoming the assistant secretary of state for public affairs. Collins told Nixon of his interest in that position. The president immedi­ately called Rogers, telling him that Collins would be an excellent fit for the job. After dinner, Pat Nixon led a tour through the White House and the Executive Office Building next door. When the crew had interacted with the First Lady at the August 13 banquet, they had found her distant and stiff. Now, she was “charming,” a “delightful, warm hostess who really tried to make us feel at home”; the tour was carried off “with unexpected enthusi­asm and a beautiful informality.” The three astronauts and their wives then spent the night at the White House. A few weeks later, “Giant Step” would be resumed for a two-day trip to Canada, but the White House evening pro­vided a satisfying conclusion to the mission of Apollo 11 and its immediate aftermath. According to Collins, Mrs. Nixon’s hospitality “made our stay at the White House the real highlight of our around the world trip.”49

Richard Nixon’s vice president, Spiro T. Agnew, was not an obvious choice to chair a review of the U. S. space program. Agnew had been elected governor of Maryland in 1966; before then he was a local Maryland politician. He had no prior exposure to space issues, or indeed to most national issues. Agnew had first supported Nelson Rockefeller as the Republican nominee for presi­dent in early 1968. But Rockefeller, much to Agnew’s surprise, in March 1968 had announced he would not enter presidential primaries or otherwise campaign for the Republican nomination. (He later reversed this position and competed with Nixon to be the Republican nominee.) Richard Nixon met with Agnew for the first time two weeks later; Nixon was “impressed with his intelligence and poise.” Nixon’s campaign asked Agnew to be one of Nixon’s nominators at the Republican convention; this put him among the leading candidates to be Nixon’s choice for the vice presidential nomination. After two of Nixon’s closest advisers turned down the vice presidential possi­bility, Nixon informed Agnew that he was his choice as vice-presidential can­didate. Nixon noted in his Memoirs that Agnew at his first press conference admitted that his name was not exactly “a household word,” and assured the press “that he would work to change that situation.” In ways likely not intended, Agnew succeeded in that objective.39

There was a straightforward reason for involving Vice President Agnew in space affairs. The vice president by law was the chairman of the National Aeronautics and Space Council, the White House organization set up by the 1958 Space Act to provide presidential-level coordination of space policy. At its origin, the president chaired the Space Council, which included as members the administrator of NASA, the secretary of defense, the secretary of state, and the chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission. When John

F. Kennedy became president in 1961, he asked the Congress to change the law to make the vice president the council chair. Kennedy recognized that Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson had been deeply involved in space matters in the Senate, and he wanted to give Johnson some specific respon­sibilities during the Kennedy administration. Johnson in his role as Space Council chair had played an important part in developing the recommenda­tions that led Kennedy to set a lunar landing within the decade as a national goal, but in the remaining 30 months of the Kennedy administration he had limited influence on space choices. Johnson did accumulate a sizeable staff for the Space Council. Once Johnson became president and chose Hubert Humphrey as vice president and thus council chair, the Space Council dur­ing the rest of the Johnson administration had become almost dormant, even while it retained its large staff.

The Nixon transition task force on space had discussed what to do with the Space Council. It observed that “the Space Council has not been very effective” and observed that President Nixon could ask Congress to abol­ish it. But, “as long as the Council exists. . . it should be made effective. For that purpose, there should be a strong staff and the President should be Chairman.” As he considered how best to organize the post-Apollo space review, science adviser DuBridge also considered what to do with the coun­cil. One option, suggested Russell Drew, the space specialist on DuBridge’s staff, was to “strengthen the Space Council,” with a “vigorous and knowl­edgeable person as Executive Secretary.” The Executive Secretary was the presidentially appointed, Senate-confirmed top staff person for the Space Council and ran the day-by-day operations of its staff. If the president were to replace the vice president as chair of the Space Council, then the council staff could logically become part of the presidential science adviser’s office and the executive secretary could report to the president through DuBridge. (It is likely that OST staffer Russell Drew aspired to the position.) The other alternative was to abolish the Space Council, but this would be likely to run into vice presidential opposition, since it would mean that he would lose a large number of dedicated staff positions.40

There was no serious consideration at the start of the Nixon administra­tion given to making the president the Space Council chair. However, over the course of 1969, there were attempts to revitalize the Space Council. One step in that direction was the May 1969 selection of 34-year-old Apollo 8 astronaut Bill Anders as the Space Council’s new executive secretary. NASA Administrator Paine was instrumental in Anders’s selection, seeing an opportunity to place someone positively disposed toward human space flight in a senior White House position, counterbalancing the skepticism of OST and OMB. Anders could not take on the job immediately, since he was part of the Apollo H backup crew; this meant that the council staff would not become engaged in the work of the STG. Anders had become convinced that he was unlikely to get a role on a later Apollo flight that would give him the opportunity to walk on the Moon, and so was ready to take on a new and very different challenge with the Space Council position. He was told

by Agnew and Paine that once he came to Washington he would have the opportunity to reinvigorate the Space Council and its staff so that they could play a more influential role in space policy development.41

But that was in the future; by coming into the vice presidency with the Space Council as one of his assigned responsibilities, Spiro Agnew in February 1969 became the titular leader of the effort to define the U. S. future in space. Few could have predicted at the time that he would become perhaps the program’s leading cheerleader within the Nixon administration.

At the conclusion of the August 4 meeting, NASA was given the assignment of defining the programmatic content of these three options. This was the role that the agency had sought from the very beginning of the STG pro­cess, when Tom Paine had argued vigorously against the proposal that space program options should be defined by DuBridge and his external advisory panel. NASA took full advantage of this assignment, and by mid-August submitted to the Staff Directors Committee three options, each of which included the same hardware elements, derived from Mueller’s integrated plan, and each of which included human missions to Mars; the difference among the plans was in their schedules and annual budget requirements, not in their content. Each included simultaneous development of the two new systems that were NASA’s top priority objectives for the next few years—a large space station and a space shuttle. Although at the August 4 meeting the STG principals had suggested that NASA prepare a $4 billion/year “aus­tere” option that included a continuing human space flight effort, NASA argued that such an option was not feasible, and thus refused to provide it. The NASA options were:

• Program A, described as “maximum progress technically feasible,” and “comparable to the 1961 decision to go to the moon.” This was essentially the program that had been presented to the STG on August 4;

• Program B, described as “maximum returns from an economical pro­gram”; and

• Program C, described as “minimum consistent with continuing techno­logical advance.”39

It was clear from the way that NASA presented its options that Program B was its preferred choice; if adopted that option would commit the Nixon administration during its second term to NASA budgets greater than those at the peak of the Apollo effort.

In the meeting with Mayo, Ehrlichman, and Flanigan on December 5, President Nixon decided to give tentative approval to the BOB recommen­dation of a NASA budget for FY1971 of $3.7 billion, but also decided to suspend production of additional Saturn V boosters. It is likely that Flanigan had significant influence on the president’s views. By the time of the budget meeting, he had become much more cautious with respect to NASA’s future plans than had been the case in the immediate aftermath of the STG report.

He also had become attuned to the reality that there was limited public support for ambitious post-Apollo space activities. On December 6, he sent a memorandum to the president reporting that “the October 6 issue of Newsweek took a poll of 1,321 Americans with household incomes ranging from $5,000 to $15,000 a year. This represents 61% of the white population of the United States and is obviously the heart of your constituency.” Of this group, Flanigan reported, “56% think the government should be spending less money on space exploration, and only 10% think the government should be spending more money.”22

Nixon’s budget decisions were communicated to Paine by Flanigan, not Mayo as would normally have been the case. Flanigan told Paine that “the President says that he doesn’t have enough money within the next couple of years and must accept limitation of activity,” that “the President will agree that at some time we will go to Mars,” that Nixon “did not see the need to go to the moon six more times,” and that “the President was alarmed [in the sense of being concerned about their future costs] about the space station and shuttle.”23 Nixon’s skepticism regarding the value of additional lunar landing missions was to be a recurrent theme during the next two years.

In a December 17 letter to Nixon appealing the tentative budget deci­sions, Paine once again gave priority to getting started on the station and the shuttle, saying “if, because of today’s severe fiscal constraints we must sacrifice some current operations. . . so be it. The important thing is to press forward now with our new program.” Closing his five-page letter, Paine told the president “I believe I would be remiss and do you and your Administration a disservice if I did not place before you as you reach these important decisions on America’s future in space the relevant facts, conse­quences, and potentialities.” He requested a meeting with Nixon to discuss his appeal.24

An indication of the context in which President Nixon would evaluate that appeal came soon after the December 5 Nixon-Mayo meeting. One influence was Flanigan’s December 6 memorandum reporting on the nega­tive public attitude toward increases in space spending. In addition, an entry in the president’s carefully read daily news summary discussed the Hunger Conference taking place in Washington that week. It noted that “constant references were made to space” as an example of spending that “could have been far better spent on hunger.” After reading this report, Nixon asked his advisers Ehrlichman and Daniel Patrick Moynihan “whether you agree that some of our money would be better spent on hunger.”25

Another signal that NASA was not going to succeed in its budget appeal came as the Apollo 12 crew visited President Nixon in the White House on Saturday, December 20. The crew and their wives (except for Alan Bean’s wife, who was ill) had dinner with President and Mrs. Nixon in the White House family quarters, then watched the movie Marooned, a story about three astronauts stranded in orbit. This was a rather odd choice for the occa­sion, given that all three of the Apollo 12 crew hoped to fly in space again, but the movie had just been released to critical acclaim. Like the Apollo 11 crew, the astronaut families stayed overnight at the White House and joined the Nixons the next morning for coffee, then attended a White House worship service. The Apollo 11 visit to the White House the previous month had been a warm and relaxed affair, but Pete Conrad sensed the president’s “apparent lack of interest in the space program.” Conrad was “disappointed and disil­lusioned” after his White House visit. He suggested that “the President paid very little attention to any discussions on space and exhibited no technical interest. He also appeared to have very little knowledge of what had gone on in space and what was going on in the future.” Conrad on several occasions “tried to bring up the future of space, the space station, the space shuttle, Mars missions, and was very quickly turned around and the subjects went back to small talk.”26

Tom Paine had a 20-minute meeting with President Nixon on the after­noon of December 23 to make his case for a higher NASA budget. In advance of that meeting, Flanigan made his recommendations to the president on dealing with NASA. He suggested that Saturn V production should be sus­pended, that study funds for the space station and shuttle should be reduced, that the frequency of Apollo launches to the Moon should be reduced to “an average of 1ЛА per year. . . thereby extending the period of manned space flight beyond the presently planned date of 1974,” that university research funds should be eliminated “as requested by the President,” and that the newly opened NASA Electronics Research Center be closed. Paine in his December 17 appeal letter had once again claimed that the steps NASA would have to take to accommodate a NASA budget of $3.7 billion would mean that “U. S. manned flight activity would end in 1972 with an uncer­tain date for resumption many years in the future.” Flanigan called this claim “unacceptable,” since it would place the “onus” for terminating the current human space flight “on the President,” while NASA would “create commit­ments for very expensive programs that will require excessive outlays in the next few years.” Flanigan was quite aware of NASA’s “crying wolf” strategy in the budget negotiations, and by this point had become extremely skeptical of its validity.27

Notes taken by Ehrlichman at the December 23 meeting dealt with only two issues—whether to continue production of the Saturn V and, if the deci­sion on that issue was to suspend production, whether to “close Kennedy [Space Center] in ’72.” Nixon did not respond to Paine’s arguments at their meeting; rather, the president made what he thought was his final decision on the NASA budget on December 26, approving a $3.735 billion NASA budget that confirmed the suspension of Saturn V production and the clo­sure of the Electronics Research Center. NASA was told that it should launch Apollo missions no more than twice a year in order to extend the time the Saturn V would be in service. Only a low level of study funds for the space station and shuttle was approved. The budget decisions were accompanied by the message that “the President was quite favorably inclined to the NASA program but that he just did not have the money to spend on it.”28

However, the shuttle-based approach to keeping space station development alive as an immediate post-Apollo prospect had a short lifetime. The NASA leadership in mid-July 1970 met to formulate the agency’s program for the next five to ten years. They took into account the president’s March space statement, the funding the agency would request in its FY1972 budget submission, due on September 30, and an estimate of the budget it could expect in the subsequent few years. A key result of these discussions was a decision to return the space station to preliminary study status rather than seek FY1972 approval to begin its detailed design and development. This decision effectively postponed the station for a number of years. Associate Administrator for Manned Space Flight Dale Myers, who had joined NASA in January 1970 as George Mueller’s successor, told Low that he was “mov­ing out to the shuttle first because. . . an interim space station, without a proper logistics system, would be dead-ended.” Low agreed, recognizing that “a space station without a shuttle makes no sense at all. . . a shuttle with­out a space station does.”4

This was a momentous choice. It meant that NASA would abandon its plan for simultaneous development of the station and shuttle that had been at the heart of its post-Apollo aspirations; rather, NASA would first seek approval to develop the space shuttle, postponing station development until after the shuttle began flying later in the 1970s. It also meant that the shut­tle would have to be sold as a general-purpose, lower-cost launch system and as the way of keeping astronauts flying in space, not as a logistics vehicle for a space station, its original rationale.

Even with the decision to give shuttle schedule priority vis-a-vis the station, the link between the space shuttle and an eventual space station remained unbreakable; in NASA’s view, one of the highest priority require­ments driving space shuttle design would be its ability to launch modules large enough to be assembled into a viable space station. NASA told the White House as it submitted its budget request in September 1970 that “we have made a major decision to defer development of a space station. . . to a later time and to orient the space station studies we will continue in FY1972 toward modular systems that can be launched as well as serviced by the space shuttle.”5 The space station for the time being might be postponed, but it would not be forgotten.

Based on the decisions made during the previous months, the human space flight program that NASA presented to the White House in September 1970 looked very different from the one put forward a year earlier. NASA hoped that this revised program, focused on beginning to develop the space shut­tle, would be seen as sufficiently responsive to White House budgetary and program priorities to gain Richard Nixon’s approval.

By shutting down the Saturn V and Apollo spacecraft production lines and by returning the space station to preliminary study status, NASA was in effect giving the Nixon administration only one alternative if there was to be a continuing U. S. human space flight program after the mid-1970s—to approve development of the NASA-designed space shuttle. This was a situ­ation unacceptable to the new space actors in the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and the Office of Science and Technology (OST); they would push NASA over the remainder of 1970 and particularly during 1971 to come up with alternative human space flight proposals or, at a minimum, alternatives to NASA’s preferred shuttle design. These two organizations operated under the premise that President Nixon did not want to termi­nate U. S. human space flights, and thus pushed to find a way of continuing such flights that both made technical sense and also could be carried out in the context of a modest NASA budget, while also maintaining a balance between the human space flight effort and robotic science and application activities. Tensions between OMB and OST on one hand and NASA on the other would be the axis of space policy debates in coming months.

With White House failure to find a successor to Tom Paine, there was a de facto realization that George Low would serve as NASA’s acting administrator as the NASA budget was being decided during the fall of 1970. Compared to Paine’s call for NASA to be a “swashbuckling” organization, Low’s thoughts as he became the agency’s top official were much more somber.

In the 1960’s, the country was looking outward, and the national priorities included the Apollo goal, because this would establish clearly in our minds and in the minds of the world technological leadership by the United States. . . The

situation in the beginning of the 1970’s is very different. We are now an intro­spective nation. We will do only those things that help ourselves and help

ourselves at an early date.1

This rather dour perspective would color Low’s actions as he sought a per­suasive rationale to convince the White House to approve NASA’s reduced post-Apollo ambitions.

Low’s first responsibility as acting administrator was finalizing NASA’s budget request for Fiscal Year (FY) 1972, due at OMB on September 30. The prospects for getting OMB approval to begin shuttle development in FY 1972, which would begin on July 1, 1971, were very much on Low’s mind as the NASA budget request was prepared: “If we do not get a firm go-ahead for the shuttle this year, we will not have a viable space program in the middle 1970’s. . . The question, then, is ‘how do we approach OMB and the White House to get them to give us $500-$600 million more than they would like to approve?’”2

It would turn out that there was no positive answer to this question. Even though the process by which decisions were made on NASA’s FY1972 budget was much more orderly than the chaotic approach of a year earlier, NASA did not get the definitive commitment to the shuttle it was seeking, In addition, there was some last-minute drama. There was serious thought given to canceling Skylab, NASA’s experimental space station. A new con­sideration—the possibility that aerospace unemployment in areas that could affect President Nixon’s reelection prospects in 1972—became part of the discussion about NASA’s future, and was a major factor in the ultimate decision to proceed with Skylab. In addition, Nixon, shaken by the Apollo 13 accident, personally tried to cancel the final lunar mission, Apollo 17, as excessively risky, but was persuaded not to follow through on that action. By the time final budget decisions were made in early January 1971, NASA’s post-Apollo future remained uncertain, although there were some positive signs that a space shuttle would eventually gain White House endorsement.

The excitement of Apollo 11 had barely begun to diminish when on September 15 President Nixon received the report of the “Space Task Group” he had created in February 1969 to recommend the course of the post-Apollo space program. That report laid out an ambitious plan, culminating in human trips to Mars sometime in the next 15 years. The president was soon to decide that the nation neither wanted nor could afford that kind of ambition in space. But this “deceleration” of the U. S. space program was still in the future as Richard Nixon and his associates made sure that the president was closely identified with the success of Apollo 11, even though he had only the good fortune to be the occupant of the White House when the lunar land­ing occurred. One way of emphasizing the linkage between the president and the mission’s success was a purposeful ignoring in Nixon’s statements related to Apollo 11 of the role of the two presidents actually responsible for Apollo—Lyndon B. Johnson, who had provided steady support for the proj­ect during his five years in the White House, and especially John F. Kennedy, who had the original vision of using a mission to the Moon as an instrument of U. S. grand strategy and then had backed up that vision with a massive commitment of human and financial resources. Richard Nixon was able to harvest the fruits of Kennedy’s and Johnson’s nurturing of Apollo without any additional commitment of tangible resources on his part. His major, and not insignificant, contribution was linking the prestige of the office of the president of the United States to the Apollo achievement. He did so skillfully, personally orchestrating his engagement with the lunar landing and its aftermath. Nixon took some significant risks along the way. If there had been a mission failure at some point or if the Apollo 11 crew members had not been so successful in their unaccustomed role as global diplomats, the “spirit of Apollo” that President Nixon so effectively used to signal U. S. determination to maintain global leadership might not have been so potent a symbol. But NASA delivered extraordinary results in carrying out the first landing on another celestial body, and Richard Nixon was able to leverage that success to a major strategic triumph for the United States.

In 1961, a large number (anywhere from 15 to 24, according to various accounts) of individuals were considered for NASA administrator before President Kennedy and Vice President Johnson on January 30 finally settled on James Webb as their choice. Webb was one of the last Kennedy nominees for a high position. The Nixon administration also considered a (smaller) number of candidates to replace Acting Administrator Tom Paine. During the transition, the position was offered to retired Air Force general Bernard Schriever, who declined, saying “he had too many obligations” to take on a full-time administration job. The position was reportedly also offered to Simon Ramo, head of the aerospace industry firm TRW. President Nixon on January 28 personally offered the job to Patrick Haggerty, chairman of Texas Instruments. Haldeman recorded that Nixon was “very impressed by his obvious brain power, and with his concept of institutionalizing innova­tion.” In fact, Nixon told Haggerty that his work in this respect “maybe was a more important contribution to the nation than actual federal service.” Haggerty agreed. He wrote Nixon on February 4, saying that “your invita­tion to join your Administration as Director of NASA both did me a great honor and faced me with an extremely difficult decision.” However, wrote Haggerty, he had decided, as the president had suggested, that finishing his effort at Texas Instruments to institutionalize innovation took priority. He thus turned down the president’s invitation.42

Almost by default, Tom Paine thus became Richard Nixon’s choice as NASA administrator. After Haggerty turned down the job, science adviser DuBridge recommended that Paine be kept on; the space trade press noted that “more and more sentiment was growing among space insiders to keep Dr. Paine.” President Nixon himself would have preferred to offer the posi­tion to Apollo 8 commander Frank Borman, with whom he had become impressed in the first weeks of his administration. Near midnight on February 24, the second day of his initial European tour as president, Nixon, after

returning from dinner with Prime Minister Harold Wilson at Chequers, the prime minister’s country home, met with Haldeman in his room at the posh Claridge Hotel in London. Haldeman reported that he and Nixon, “in his pajamas and pretty well out. . . discussed the NASA appointment briefly. He said go ahead on Paine, the Deputy, unless I thought we could do Borman.” Haldeman did not think that Borman would take the job, and thus the choice of Paine as the head of NASA was made.

President Nixon announced the nomination on March 5 as he presented a trophy to the Apollo 8 astronauts at the White House, saying “there has been a great deal of interest as to who would be the new head of NASA. I will admit right now that we have searched the country to find a man who could take this program now and give it the leadership that it needs, as we move from one phase to another. This is an exciting period, and it requires the new leadership that a new man can provide.” He added “but after searching the whole country for somebody, perhaps outside the program, we found, as is often the case, that the best man in the country was in the program, and that is why I am announcing today that Dr. Paine, who is now the Acting Director of NASA, will be appointed the Director of NASA.”43

With Nixon’s choice of Paine, NASA got a leader who over the next 18 months would be an unceasing advocate for a space program more ambi­tious than Richard Nixon felt he could afford or that the U. S. public and the Congress would support. The gap between what Paine thought was desir­able for the nation to undertake in space and what the Nixon administration decided was fiscally and programmatically possible frustrated Tom Paine, but he never lost his enthusiasm.

That NASA would indeed be frustrated in its ambitions was not clear in early 1969 as the review of options for the future in space got underway and as NASA readied itself to send Americans to the Moon. In the enthusiasm surrounding the lunar landing, it was not unreasonable for NASA to expect that the White House would want to continue the kind of ambitious space effort that had led to that remarkable achievement. With Tom Paine leading the charge, NASA set as its top priority making sure that the Space Task Group would recommend an ambitious post-Apollo effort aimed at landing on another celestial body. Having reached the Moon, the space agency now would set its sights on voyages to Mars.

As the STG effort moved toward its conclusion, President Richard Nixon and his inner circle of advisors were focused on capitalizing on, for broader policy and political purposes, the excitement surrounding the successful Apollo 11 mission. Nixon purposely avoided saying anything about future space efforts in the many remarks he made both in the United States and during his around – the-world trip following the Apollo 11 splash down. However, Nixon could not help but be aware of Vice President Agnew’s call for a human mission to Mars, given his regular reading of his daily news summaries. He had talked about the space program with both Tom Paine and, separately, with Frank Borman on the trip to the Apollo 11 landing, and he had indicated his interest in foreign astronaut participation in U. S. space flights, an interest that Paine either misinterpreted or amplified without the president’s approval to include non-U. S. hardware contributions to post-Apollo space system development. Nixon in his conversation with Paine did not share his broader views on the future in space, nor did he refer to the STG deliberations.

At lower levels in the White House hierarchy, however, there was grow­ing attention being given to the debates within the STG and to what options would be presented for presidential decision. As noted in chapter 2, Assistant to the President Peter Flanigan had since April been assigned the space portfolio; following space issues for Flanigan on a day-by-day basis was his 30-year-old assistant Tom Whitehead, who had the technical background that most others on the White House staff lacked.40 As he began to familiarize himself with NASA’s planning for its future, Whitehead quickly had become concerned that the process was heading towards an outcome that was not in President Nixon’s interests. On June 25, he alerted Flanigan to his “uneasiness” regard­ing the STG review. His main concern was that “NASA and others will use the enthusiasm generated by a success of Apollo 11 to create very strong pressures on the President to commit him[self] and the Nation prematurely to a large and continuing space budget.” Whitehead suggested that “a strong case can be made for constraining the NASA budget to its present level or slightly lower, while at the same time permitting the United States to maintain a strong space program, including manned space flight.” He looked to Fiscal Year (FY) 1971 budget deliberations later in 1969 as providing “an opportunity to review sig­nificantly different alternative levels of spending so that the President will have meaningful options to consider.” In order to create such options, Whitehead suggested “Bob Mayo has to be reassured that the President’s interests would be served and the President is personally interested in a serious evaluation of several alternative NASA budget levels including one in the vicinity of $2.5 to $3 billion”; such a budget level would reflect a significant reduction from NASA’s FY1970 budget of almost $4 billion. Whitehead also suggested that “the President should be informed that NASA is making very strong public statements about future commitments,” creating the possibility that he “may find himself in a very difficult situation in the next few months” unless he insisted on such budget options as a way of countering “pressure being gen­erated by NASA in the press and on the Hill.” Whitehead was “not arguing here for a reduced NASA budget,” but rather suggesting that there should be “a serious analysis of a $2.5 to $3 billion level in space programs, including its costs and potential accomplishments.” In his judgment, there were “signifi­cant budgetary, scientific, and political factors that suggest that this could be a desirable alternative for the President.” Whitehead also suggested that either he or Flanigan “call Bob Mayo to emphasize the importance of including at least three major options in the fiscal year 1971 budget review process.” He also suggested that Flanigan write a memorandum to the president “suggest­ing that NASA be calmed down during the enthusiasm of Apollo 11.”41

Whitehead’s views obviously ran very counter to what NASA was hoping to achieve by having its future plans evaluated in the context of Apollo H excitement. Had they become known to NASA, they might have raised a warning flag about the path that NASA was pursuing, but apparently they were not communicated except to the BOB, and then not until late August. On August 20, Whitehead discussed budget options with Schlesinger, the BOB deputy director. Whitehead told Schlesinger that “the President is not eager to proceed with an expanded space program, and in fact would like to see it significantly reduced in the near future.” Whitehead also claimed that he had discussed such a posture with “other White House people” and found “none who indicated any real problem with significant reductions in the space program.” He asked Schlesinger to make sure that a $2.5 billion option was included in both the STG report and the guidance being given to NASA as it prepared its FY1971 budget proposal. The head of the BOB unit in charge of the NASA budget, Don Crabill, who was also part of the STG Staff Directors Committee, asked whether Whitehead had spoken directly with the president; Schlesinger “thought not.” Thus there is no evidence one way or the other regarding whether Whitehead was representing Richard Nixon’s actual views, or rather using the president’s name as a justification for his own skeptical perspective, a frequent practice among the Nixon White House staff. Crabill told Schlesinger that he and other NASA budget exam­iners thought that a $2.5 billion NASA budget for FY1971 was “equivalent to a no-manned-space-flight position.”42

In an August 22 conversation with Schlesinger, Crabill learned that Flanigan, likely in response to Whitehead’s suggestion, had at some point “telephoned Dr. Paine and instructed him to stop public advocacy of early manned Mars activity because it was causing trouble in Congress and restrict­ing Presidential options.” Flanigan, saying that he had discussed the issue with the president, had suggested to Scheslinger that Nixon “would like options even lower than $2.5 billion.” Following this guidance, Schlesinger asked Crabill to prepare an additional budget option to “define a $1.5 billion per year space program.”43

These White House conversations were taking place as NASA was push­ing the STG to recommend its Program B, which called for a 1983 launch of a mission to Mars and a NASA budget during the later 1970s of almost $8 billion per year. NASA was insisting that at an annual budget of $4 bil­lion it could not carry out a viable program of human space flight during the 1970s. Even NASA’s Program C had a budget increasing to almost $6 billion by the mid-1970s. The alliance between Vice President Agnew and Tom Paine was plowing ahead toward a sure confrontation with the Nixon White House, with the content of the STG report the immediate focus of that confrontation.