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