Category After Apollo?

In the week before the March 7 release of the space statement, there were some final edits to the draft that had been ready on January 3. The plan was to have NASA Administrator Paine return directly from Japan, where he had been discussing post-Apollo cooperation, arriving in Florida in time to meet with the president at his Key Biscayne retreat, then to be available to answer press questions after the statement’s release.31

NASA was given one more chance to comment on the draft. The space agency suggested two substantive modifications and a few word changes. Instead of just a passing mention of the space shuttle, NASA suggested add­ing two sentences saying “we are currently examining the design of a reus­able space shuttle that could evolve into a new space capability. With this capability, we could fully exploit and use space for the benefit of all man­kind and at the same time substantially reduce the cost of space operations.” This was another attempt to get the president on the record as supporting the shuttle. It was rejected. The other suggested addition reflected a vague mention of the intention to fly foreign astronauts: “Unmanned scientific payloads from other nations already make use of our space capabilities on a cost-shared basis; we look forward to the day when these arrangements can be extended to larger application satellites and astronaut crews.” This suggested change was tentatively accepted by Whitehead; he told Flanigan’s office that, if Flanigan “has any troubles” with the mention of foreign astro­nauts, “blow the whistle fast!!!”32 Flanigan did not object, and the NASA change was incorporated into the statement.

On March 5, the statement went to John Ehrlichman for final review before being sent to the president. Ehrlichman recommended to Nixon “that you approve the Space Statement. . . for release this Saturday.” After getting the president’s verbal approval, Ehrlichman on March 6 checked the “Approve” option on the memo. This was the climax of the elaborate staff process that had begun exactly five months earlier with Flanigan’s October 6 charge to Whitehead to begin drafting the space statement.33

There were at this midweek point still plans for President Nixon to meet with Tom Paine on Saturday in Key Biscayne before the statement was released. Flanigan prepared a briefing memorandum in anticipation of the meeting. Recognizing that NASA was not happy with the cautious tone of the statement and that Nixon was more positively inclined toward the space program than most of his advisors, Flanigan told Ehrlichman that, while he believed that “it would be desirable for the President to meet with Paine for a short time, I would urge that this not be an occasion for Paine to attempt to talk the President into reinterpretations of the Message, since we are not yet ready to make any further commitments on NASA programs.” Flanigan told Nixon that the space statement “was designed primarily to put space in per­spective vis-a-vis our other priorities and to set forth a rationale for planning the future direction of the space program.” Flanigan reminded the president that the “thrust” of the statement was “more explanatory of a rationale than a listing of program initiatives,” and recommended that Nixon suggest to Paine that he “address the rationale as well as program initiatives in his press brief­ing.” With respect to international cooperation, Flanigan told the president “this area turns out to be more difficult than might be expected.” Flanigan counseled Nixon, if Paine were to raise the question of the level of presidential commitment to the space station and the space shuttle, to “stress the need to consider a full range of options and make design and development decisions only after more technological and cost unknowns are resolved.”34

As it turned out, Paine and Nixon did not meet on the morning of March 7; the president took most of the morning off from official duties. Nor did any of the activities that had been planned in December to accompany the release of the statement take place; by this time, the statement was modest enough in aspiration to convince the White House it did not merit high vis­ibility. Flanigan had suggested in early February that “much of the interest in the future of the space program has been dissipated”; the White House press and communications staffs apparently agreed.35 In May 1961, John Kennedy had announced his decision to go to the Moon in a nationally tele­vised address before a joint session of Congress. In 1970, Richard Nixon’s space policy was announced in the form of a statement issued by the White House press office; Nixon himself was nowhere to be seen.

The final version of the space statement differed little from the draft that had been ready for release in January, with the exception of incorporating some, but not all, of NASA’s suggested changes and linking the rationale put forth in the statement to the administration’s FY1971 budget decisions. The document was released as a “Statement by the President.” The statement noted that “over the last decade, the principal goal of our nation’s space program has been the moon” and that it was now time to “define new goals that make sense for the Seventies.” Those goals had to be chosen while rec­ognizing “that many critical problems here on this planet make high priority demands on our attention and resources. By no means should we allow our space program to stagnate. But—with the entire future and entire universe before us—we should not try to do everything at once.” It mentioned the STG report and said that “after reviewing that report and considering our national priorities,” Nixon had “reached a number of conclusions concerning the future pace and direction of the nation’s space effort.”

Having said that there was a need to “define new goals that make sense for the Seventies,” the statement did not spell out such goals, at least in a way similar to President Kennedy in 1961. Rather, it called for an approach to space that was both “bold” and “balanced.” It identified “three general purposes” to “guide our space program”: exploration, scientific knowledge, and practical applications. Six “specific objectives” were identified: [6]

• “We should work to reduce substantially the cost of space operations.” The statement noted the need in the “longer-range future” for a means of transporting payloads into space that would be “less costly and less complicated” and said “we are currently examining. . . the feasibility of re­usable space shuttles as one way of achieving this objective.”

• “We should seek to extend man’s capability to live and work in space.” The statement discussed the “Experimental Space Station (XSS).” (NASA by this time had christened the orbital workshop as Skylab, but had not convinced the White House to use the new name in the statement.) It said that “on the basis of our experience with the XSS, we will decide when and how to develop longer-lived space stations.”

• “We should hasten and expand the practical applications of space technol­ogy.”

• “We should encourage greater international cooperation in space.”

The core policy element of the statement set out the approach to treating space as “an investment in the future.” The final version of this policy decla­ration differed little from what had been in the January draft:

We must realize that space activities will be part of our lives for the rest of time. We must think of them as part of a continuing process—one which will go on day in and day out, year in and year out—and not as a series of separate leaps, each requiring a massive concentration of energy and will and accom­plished on a crash timetable. Our space program should not be planned in a rigid manner, decade by decade, but on a continuing flexible basis, one which takes into account our changing needs and our expanding knowledge.

We must also recognize that space expenditures must take their proper place within a rigorous system of national priorities. What we do in space from here on in must become a normal and regular part of our national life and must therefore be planned in conjunction with all of the other undertakings which are also important to us.36

The overall message of the president’s space statement was that NASA’s days of operating outside of the continuing competition for government resources were over. The Apollo program in 1962 had been formally assigned the government’s highest national security priority, giving it preferred access to scarce resources, and it was difficult for the NASA leadership, indeed for most of the space community that had grown up alongside Apollo, to accept a future in which that priority was drastically reduced, with space becoming just one among many areas of government activity. Yet a realistic reading of the Nixon space statement in the context of the overall policies of his admin­istration should have made clear that this was the space agency’s most likely prospect.

Another of the early recommendations of the Ash Council was to abolish the National Aeronautics and Space Council (NASC), on the grounds that its policy coordination function could be performed by the combination of OST and OMB.6 As discussed in chapter 2, the Space Council, composed of the head of NASA, the secretaries of state and defense, the chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission, the secretary of transportation (added by Congress in 1970), and chaired by the vice president, had seldom met at the principals level during the presidency of Lyndon Johnson, and its staff had had little influence on Johnson administration space policy decisions. Vice President Agnew in early 1969 had taken initial steps to revitalize the coun­cil, selecting Apollo 8 astronaut Bill Anders as the council’s executive secre­tary and trying to build up a high-quality professional staff under Anders’ direction.

However, the Space Council staff did not play a significant role in the decisions with respect to the FY1971 budget or the content of the March 1970 presidential space statement. A key reason for the lack of influence on the part of Anders and his staff was that they were working for Vice President Spiro Agnew. Richard Nixon and his immediate advisors were disinclined to give Agnew any meaningful policy role, preferring to use him for political attacks on administration opponents and as a link to state and local officials. Agnew soon lost interest in space issues. Without the “top cover” of an influential vice president, Anders was largely left on his own to find ways to involve himself and his staff in ongoing policy debates. He had some success in this regard in areas such as space science and applications and aeronautics, and he got personally involved with Cap Weinberger with respect to the NASA program, but neither Vice President Agnew nor the Space Council as a body from 1970 on had any involvement in discussions related to the future of human space flight.7

As preparations for developing the FY1972 Nixon budget began, White House staff secretary Ken Cole on August 24 wrote the new director of OMB, George Shultz, reminding him of the Ash Council proposal to elimi­nate the Space Council and suggesting that “it seems appropriate to again consider” abolishing the council and that “perhaps this is a project that the Office of Management and Budget will want to undertake.” The response to this suggestion took some time to develop. In September, OMB Assistant Director Dwight Ink commented that “the Space Council has not really played a significant policy role since its inception.” He noted that Anders had “assembled a vigorous staff who want to exert more leadership, but the Space Council does not provide a viable base for their efforts.” In October, OMB Assistant Director Don Rice indicated his “general feeling” that “organiza­tions [such as the Space Council] spend money and make paperwork—both of which are bad until proven otherwise.” OMB Associate Director Arnold Weber on October 29 suggested that “the Council should be abolished effec­tive June 30, 1971.” He added “the change in emphasis on space programs as we attempt to fit those programs into overall national priorities makes it unnecessary to retain” the council. The OMB recommendation recognized “some political and public relations problems,” such as the appearance of “an insensitivity on the part of the Administration to the problems of the aerospace industry” and of “an attempt to reduce the stature of the Vice President.”8

As it turned out, the White House in December 1970 decided to keep the Space Council. Vice President Agnew called Ehrlichman, inquiring about the fate of the council. Ehrlichman told him that “the President’s State of the Union [speech] undoubtedly would involve changes in organizational structure which would contemplate elimination of the Space Council as a separate and independent entity.” Agnew asked for a meeting to discuss the situation. Agnew persuaded Ehrlichman that the council’s staff could be an asset in selling the administration’s space and aeronautics programs to Congress and an effective liaison with the aerospace industry. These assign­ments would not involve the council staff in policy formulation, but rather use the staff as a “selling device.” Ehrlichman agreed that it would be “bad politics to dismantle [the Council] now,” since it could send a signal that such an action marked “the end of the space program.” That was not a mes­sage that the Nixon White House wanted to send; there was already concern about the impact of aerospace unemployment on the 1972 presidential elec­tion. After lunching with Ehrlichman a few days later and learning that the council was not likely to be dissolved, Bill Anders told him “I believe the Council and its staff can fit into the reorganized White House team quite nicely and can provide valuable support to both domestic and national secu­rity interests across a broad front.”9

Armstrong, Aldrin, and Collins were launched toward the Moon at 9:32 a. m. (all times are Eastern Daylight Time) on July 16, 1969.* President Nixon watched the launch in the White House together with Borman. Soon after the third stage of the Saturn V booster fired to send the crew on a trajectory that would bring them to the Moon three days later, the White House issued a presidential proclamation designating July 21 as a “National Day of Participation.” The statement declared “Apollo 11 is on its way to the moon. . . Never before has man embarked on so epic an adventure.” It noted that “in past ages, exploration was a lonely enterprise. But today the miracles of space travel are matched by the miracles of space commu­nication. . . Television brings the moment of discovery into our homes, and makes all of us participants.” Indeed, the Apollo 11 mission was the first event to be televised globally; the communications satellite required to com­plete a global network had been put into orbit over the Indian Ocean only a few days earlier. Nixon ordered all federal government offices to be closed on July 21; he urged “the Governors of the States, the mayors of cities, the heads of school systems, and other public officials to take similar action” and “private employers to make appropriate arrangements so that as many of our citizens as possible will be able to share in the significant events of that day.” While Armstrong and Aldrin were scheduled to land on the Moon on the afternoon of July 20, their mission timeline called for a sleep period before emerging from Eagle for their historic moonwalk sometime after 2:00 a. m. on the morning of July 21. One purpose of declaring July 21 as what amounted to a national holiday was to allow as many as possible to stay up well past midnight to watch the first steps on the Moon without having to worry about getting up to go to work the same morning.

On the morning of July 20, President Nixon presided over an interdenom­inational church service in the East Room of the White House. The service was attended by some 300 people, including cabinet secretaries, members of Congress, and the diplomatic corps. Borman read the same verses from the Bible that he and his crew had read as they circled the Moon on Christmas Eve, and a Quaker minister provided the sermon.27

After a virtually trouble-free voyage, the Apollo 11 spacecraft went into orbit around the Moon on July 19, and at 1:44 p. m. on July 20 the lunar module Eagle separated from the command and service module Columbia to begin its descent to the lunar surface. After a hair-raising final few moments which saw Neil Armstrong take over manual control of Eagle to pilot the spacecraft to a safe landing spot, Apollo 11 landed on the Moon at 4:18 p. m. A few seconds later, Armstrong reported “Houston, Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed.” Accompanied by Borman, Nixon watched the land­ing on television in his hideaway office in the Executive Office Building next to the White House.

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.