Category After Apollo?

As NASA entered the Fiscal Year 1973 “budget season” by submitting its proposed budget on September 30, 1971, its prospects remained very uncer­tain. On one hand, NASA might both receive presidential approval for a major new space effort, the space shuttle, and at the same time be asked by the White House to take on a much broadened role as the nation’s applied technology agency. On the other hand, NASA might not gain approval for the shuttle program, and some other approach might be chosen for the new technology opportunities effort. The short-term stakes for the organization’s future were very high.

The Space Shuttle extended study contracts expired on October 31 and NASA for a second time extended the contracts for another four months. The focus of the continuing effort was still the Mark I/Mark II orbiter sequence with various means of boosting it into orbit. Low reported in early November that “the shuttle configuration is beginning to be focused on a considerably smaller orbiter with external hydrogen and oxygen tanks (but with the same payload size and weight), and with a pressure-fed recoverable booster that might be parallel staged. . . It may be possible to buy a shuttle for an investment cost (including the high pressure [space shuttle main] engine of less than $5 billion with cost per flight of the order of $10 million. . . Solid rocket motors also look promising.” On the basis of these study results, Low suggested that “if NASA were left to its own devices, I think we are now in a position to make a decision to move out with contractor selection and to proceed with the work. I believe it is important to get a decision on this soon and within the FY1973 budget process, unless the decision is the wrong decision.” The wrong decision, in Low’s view, “would be a glider on a Titan III.” But NASA had “not yet done adequate analysis of the glider,” primarily due to the resistance from Dale Myers and his space flight team, and thus NASA “should not absolutely discard it. The next several weeks will tell the story.” Also, observed Low, “NASA is not left to its own devices, and it appears that everyone wants to have their fingers in the pot.” Low also noted that “the only organized effort to either support or not support the shuttle is the so-called Flax Committee.” It seemed to Low to be important for NASA to influence the thinking of Flax and his associates.27

The detailed performance and budget requirements for a smaller shuttle that OMB presented to NASA did not originate from the OMB staff, none of whom were aerospace engineers. Rice had sought outside advice on shuttle configuration and capability. He noted “some of my information came from the Defense Department, but not very much of it.” He added “some of it came from industry. There were clearly some people in industry who were concerned that NASA was going to lead them down the road of another C-5A or F-111 debacle and that they would end up with nothing.” The two programs Rice cited were DOD aircraft development efforts during the 1960s characterized by major cost overruns. Rice noted that “there was some interest at least among some people in the aerospace industry [in] hav­ing whatever was done be a program that was politically survivable.” That interest translated into an attitude of “let’s have it be less rather than more so it doesn’t turn out to cost so much and it is less likely to overrun and you can keep it.” Given this feeling, Rice worked with an aerospace firm, almost certainly one of NASA’s shuttle study contractors, to help his staff spell out the characteristics of a shuttle concept that both made technical sense and could be developed at an acceptable cost. Weinberger was aware of what Rice was doing, saying “Don Rice asked me if he could go out and get some other people, or he told me that he had.”21

As soon as NASA headquarters in Washington received confirma­tion that the presidential statement had been issued in San Clemente, Charles Donlan, director of the space shuttle program, sent a mes­sage to shuttle program manager Robert Thompson at the Manned Spacecraft Center, saying "NASA will proceed with the development of the space shuttle. The shuttle orbiter is expected to have a 15 x 60 foot payload bay, and a 65,000 pound payload capability. It will be boosted either by a pressure fed liquid recoverable booster or by solid rocket motors." The message contained detailed instructions to guide the next phase of shuttle studies.1

Reaction to the president’s announcement was mixed. The New York Times quickly editorialized that the shuttle was an "investment in the future" and that Nixon’s decision to approve the shuttle was "wise." Predictably, given their 1971 attempt to cut funding for shuttle studies, Senators William Proxmire (D-WI) and Walter Mondale (D-MN) announced that they would lead the Senate opposition to shuttle approval; in addition, Senator Edward Muskie (D-ME), at that point the likely opponent for Richard Nixon in the 1972 presidential election, also said that he opposed the program as a "boondoggle." Talking with his political operative Chuck Colson on January 9, Richard Nixon was pleased to hear that Muskie’s opposition to the shuttle "may have blown his chances in Florida completely." Nixon noted that "in Florida and California this [approving the shuttle] is a big deal. It will save the aerospace industry."2 Whatever else his approval of the space shuttle meant to Richard Nixon, he saw it as an asset in terms of his reelection prospects.

From 1970 on, one of the performance requirements driving space shuttle design was NASA’s intent at some future point to use the shuttle to launch elements of a space station. This was recognized by the OMB staff, who observed in 1971 that “in a sense, a commitment to a shuttle is an implicit commitment to a subsequent space station program.” There is no evidence that this shuttle-station link was considered by the president and his senior advisers as the final shuttle decision was made, but the choice of the NASA shuttle design carried with it the virtual certainty that a future president would be asked to approve a shuttle-launched station.

That is precisely what happened. The shuttle’s first flight was in April 1981; soon after that flight, President Ronald Reagan’s nominees for NASA administrator and deputy administrator, James Beggs and Hans Mark, agreed that they “would try to persuade the new administration to adopt the construction of a permanently manned space station as the next major goal in space.” The two announced their intent at their Congressional confirma­tion hearing in June 1981, in essence repeating Tom Paine’s 1969 argument that the space station was “the next major evolutionary step in man’s experi­mentation, conquest, and use of space.” Beggs and Mark characterized the station as “the next logical step.” It took almost three years for NASA to gain presidential approval; during his State of the Union address on January 25, 1984, Ronald Reagan announced that “I am directing NASA to develop a permanently manned space station and to do it within a decade.”27

Discussing the long and troubled history of the space station project is beyond the scope of this study; the point here is that from its 1968 origin as the logistics vehicle for a Saturn V-launched space station, through the 1970 decision to switch to a shuttle-launched station and then to defer sta­tion development until the shuttle was flying, to the final July 2011 outfit­ting mission to what had become the International Space Station, there was an unbreakable link between the shuttle and the station. That bond meant that, unless the station program was terminated early, NASA had to keep the shuttle in service until station assembly and outfitting were completed. The high costs of the shuttle and station programs thus dominated the NASA human space flight budget for almost 40 years.

Splashdown was set for just after 1:00 p. m. on the afternoon of April 17. Haldeman gives a vivid description of the events of the day:

Apollo 13 day. They made it back and the P [President Nixon] was really elated! Started out in the morning with some general details, then into a lot of plan­ning, etc., for his participation in the Apollo return. Had TV, squawk box, and [former astronauts] Collins and Anders set up in Alex’s [Nixon aide Alexander Butterfield] office to keep him posted. Kind of anxious about results but basi­cally confident that they’d make it, and all wrapped up on little specifics about the trip, which we have very well set up on contingency basis.

[material deleted]

For splashdown, P watched in Alex Butterfield’s office with Alex, me, Anders, Collins and K [Henry Kissinger]. Was very cranked up. Ordered cigars for all on success when learned that was Chris Kraft tradition at NASA. Put through call to wives immediately, then waited to call astronauts till they were aboard Iwo Jima [the recovery aircraft carrier] and had called wives. Meanwhile P called all the Congressional leaders and George Meany, saying to all, “Isn’t this a great day.” He was really excited. . . Then talked to astronauts and told them of trip plans, then out to press to do likewise, then over to the EOB [Executive Office Building] at about 3:30, with no lunch. Took a nap.

Nixon biographer Richard Reeves adds an additional detail to the day’s account. He suggests that as Nixon talked to the Congressional leaders after the splashdown, he was “having one drink after another,” and that soon after he reached his hideaway office in the Executive Office Building, “the President was drunk, falling asleep on the couch.” If that were indeed the

case, Nixon recovered quickly; that evening he hosted a White House per­formance by country music singer Johnny Cash.28

On April 18, President Nixon flew to Houston. At the Manned Spacecraft Center, he presented the Medal of Freedom to the Apollo 13 mission opera­tions team. Then he flew to Hickham Air Force Base in Honolulu, Hawaii. There he presented the Medal of Freedom to Lovell, Haise, and Swigert. He told the crew that “this was a successful mission, a great mission on behalf of your country. . . You did not reach the moon, but you reached the hearts of millions of people on earth by what you did. . . We realize that greatness comes not simply in triumph, but in adversity.”29

Richard Nixon’s associates never passed up an opportunity to portray the president in a positive light. Even as they planned how the president would deal with the unfolding crisis, they made sure that his involvement would reflect well on Nixon as a national leader. In the days after the safe return of the Apollo 13 crew, the White House approached Life magazine senior correspondent Hugh Sidey about “doing an inside story on the President’s involvement in and the attitudes, etc. during the Apollo 13 crisis.” It took several months for this suggestion to bear fruit, but eventually Sidey wrote a very positive account, saying that “the near tragedy of Apollo 13, a deeply emotional drama for all Americans, was even more so for the President.” The Apollo astronauts, Sidey suggested, were an “obsession” for Nixon, who viewed them “as more than heroes.” According to Sidey, Nixon, “in his single-minded manner. . . seems to be trying to assess and grasp the spirit of the astronauts.”30

Richard Nixon’s involvement with Apollo 13 has been discussed in some detail because the episode reinforced to his associates the reality that Nixon would never accept a future U. S. space program not including human space flight as an important element. In addition, Nixon’s concern for the astro­nauts’ safety became linked to a political calculus in his mind regarding possible negative political fallout from a similar problem on a future Apollo flight. When he got the impression that Apollo 17 was particularly risky, it is not surprising that Nixon’s first instinct was to cancel the flight.

One study of space shuttle development comments that during 1971 “pres­sures of financial stringency penetrated every aspect of the Shuttle program. Few high-technology development programs, if any, have been subjected to the kind of fiscal pressures and controls which the Shuttle Program endured, and it was during this period that they had the greatest impact on the design process.” Indeed, “the fiscal and political environment influenced the detailed engineering design decisions on a month to month, and at times, a day to day basis.”25

This pressure was already in the background as NASA’s Associate Administrator for Manned Space Flight Dale Myers and his top associates decided in January 1971 to direct NASA’s contractors to restrict their stud­ies to a shuttle design that could meet all national security requirements. Myers convened a January 19-20, 1971, meeting in Williamsburg, Virginia, attended by all those involved in shuttle studies. At the meeting, Myers announced the requirements that would guide the remaining months of the ongoing shuttle studies. Performance requirements included:

• The ability to launch 65,000 pounds into a due east 100 nautical mile (nm) orbit, which equated with the ability to launch 40,000 pounds into a polar orbit, a national security requirement;

• Nominal cross-range of 1,100 nm, the least amount acceptable to the national security community; up to that point, NASA’s contractors had been studying both a delta-wing orbiter design capable of 1,500 nm cross­range as well as one with straight wings and only 200 nm cross-range;

• Engines capable of generating 550,000 pounds of sea-level thrust. NASA had allowed its Phase A and Phase B contractors also to examine the use of an engine with 415,000 pounds of thrust, and most industry stud­ies had preferred that option. Myers’s directive removed that choice. The more powerful engine would be required to launch the heaviest NASA and national security payloads;

• The ability to return payloads weighing up to 40,000 pounds, also a national security requirement.26

Although the cross-range requirement had originated with the Department of Defense (DOD) and in the early stages of shuttle studies had been resisted by NASA, by this time many of those within NASA and industry involved in shuttle design efforts acknowledged the limitations of the straight-wing orbiter design, which was the preference of NASA’s Max Faget, and recog­nized that a high cross-range vehicle had a number of operational advantages in terms of dissipating energy during return from orbit and of getting the shuttle orbiter to an appropriate landing site from various orbits. Myers’s January 1971 directive eliminated the straight-wing design from further consideration; whatever shuttle design NASA would choose would have delta-shaped wings.

Both OST and those dealing with space issues in OMB had recognized at the start of 1971 that a decision on whether or not to proceed with NASA’s space shuttle program would almost certainly be made during the consid­eration of NASA FY1973 budget request that fall. The two organizations decided that it would be useful to have an external group assess the techni­cal aspects of the NASA shuttle concept and the shuttle’s relationship to likely future space program activities. The Mathematica study was already underway to assess shuttle economics; there was a felt need for a parallel technical assessment by an expert group outside the government. To take on this task, science adviser David decided to constitute a “special panel” of the President’s Science Advisory Committee (PSAC).

David discussed a potential chair for the panel with George Low in April. David’s first inclination was to have Gene Fubini be the chairman. Fubini was a well-known “gadfly” in the Washington technical community, respected for his technical acumen and insight, but notorious for his arrogance and quick temper. Low suggested that “Fubini would not be the right person because

(a) he is too flighty and jumps too much from one thought to another, and

(b) he really does not have any aircraft background to contribute to this.” Low suggested several alternatives among the respected leaders of the aero­space community. Low soon learned that David had selected one of his sug­gested people, Alexander Flax, as chair; Flax was head of the national security think tank Institute for Defense Analysis and from 1965 to 1969 had been Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for research and development and simul­taneously director of the National Reconnaissance Office. Low observed that “Ed David really wants to be helpful in establishing this panel.”11

Fubini was made a member of what quickly came to be known as the “Flax committee.” Other members of the group included both individuals with the aerospace engineering background needed to assess shuttle design and potential users of the shuttle’s capabilities. The Flax committee sched­uled its first meeting for August 13-15 at the National Academy of Sciences summer conference center in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. In advance of the meeting, OMB’s Don Rice sent David a list of questions that he hoped the Flax committee would address. In turn, David forwarded the questions to NASA so that NASA was prepared to respond as they interacted with the Flax committee. Among the ten questions were: [9]

• “How sensitive are the cost benefit relationships to changes in the rate of activity and assumptions about the lifetimes of unmanned satellites?”12

Also in advance of the Woods Hole meeting, Fubini met with Low. He told Low that the committee would work “under the premise that the Science Adviser cannot recommend to the President the cancellation of the United States manned space flight program”; the group should thus ask “what is the manned space flight program that (a) is acceptable from a budget point of view; (b) is clearly a step beyond what has already been achieved; and (c) is not dead-ended?”13

After the first Flax committee meeting, Dale Myers reported that in syn­thesizing his committee’s initial reactions Flax had suggested that the com­mittee “felt that . . . the broad implications of the shuttle had not yet been addressed.” The committee thought that “the peak funding and perhaps the total funding” for the shuttle program were too expensive to be acceptable and that “the program goes on too long before there is a payoff.” (At this point, NASA was still advocating in its external presentations the two-stage, fully-reusable shuttle design.) Flax had added that the committee’s view was that “a smaller, lighter, shuttle vehicle seemed to be in order” and that the “60 x 15 payload compartment may be larger than we need.” With respect to the reactions of other committee members, Myers observed that “Fubini felt that a program this long should have something spectacular every four years.” Committee member Richard Garwin from IBM “felt that there should be more effort on big, dumb boosters, parachute recovered boosters, automatic landing, unmanned flights of the shuttle, and much greater use of the data relay satellites where you can get rid of the men in the orbiter. . . All actions done by men in orbit can be done by men on the ground using a data relay satellite and good data transmission.” Myers said that “most of the other members of the Committee were not very outspoken.” Myers paraphrased the committee’s questions:

1. “Will the users really design cheaper payloads to take advantage of the volume and weight capability?”

2. “Will the launch rate stay at 40/year or greater during an era when satel­lite life is increasing?”

3. “Is there a firm requirement for a 15 x 60 payload compartment?”

4. “Why crossrange?”

5. “Why not build the booster first?” and

6. “Why not unmanned shuttles, with automatic landings, or para­chutes?”14

Low met with David on August 24 to discuss the results of the commit­tee meeting. It was David’s feeling “that the Flax Committee (with Fubini leading the pack) is going to come in with some interesting options” that “include a shuttle of about $5 billion total investment running about $1 bil­lion per year.” Low told David that NASA “was thinking along similar lines but so far had not discussed them in any detail with the Flax Committee.”15 These budget targets, no more than $1 billion per year and a total invest­ment cost for shuttle development of $5 billion, were by the end of August beginning to be recognized by NASA as defining the limits within which a proposal for presidential approval of the shuttle had the best chance of suc­cess. The question facing Fletcher, Low, and their engineering colleagues was whether a shuttle worth having, particularly one that met both NASA’s institutional needs and the requirements set out by the national security community, could be developed within those budget constraints. It was clear that the reusable two-stage shuttle, with development cost estimates of $10 billion or more, could not be pursued on a $1 billion per year budget; this had led NASA internally to abandon that option during the summer.

To that end, Low and Dale Myers met with Flax on November 12, in advance of the November 17-18 meeting of Flax’s committee. It was still Flax’s view that “the next manned space flight program should involve some techno­logical advance and that operational costs are not all that important,” since whatever system was chosen would not be flown frequently. Throughout the shuttle decision process, neither NASA nor the White House and its external advisors gave careful attention to how much it would cost to operate the shuttle; this would turn out to be the program’s Achilles heel. Flax also sug­gested “that it is Ed David’s view that the shuttle is dead unless David saves it and that the only way he can save it for us is by supporting something that is much less than the previously proposed shuttle; namely, the glider.”

Low by this point had developed a diagram showing a cost curve that compared the development and operating costs of various shuttle designs and the space glider; he was to use a version of that diagram and the trade-off between development and operational costs it depicted as a major selling tool in his frequent meetings during November and December. He drew the curve on Flax’s blackboard and made the point that NASA “now had some very interesting developments in the range of development costs between $4.5 billion and $6 billion, with operating costs around $10 million per flight.” Flax thought that “some” of his committee members might be willing to support a shuttle with those characteristics, and Low and Myers agreed that Myers would present, for the first time, “the small orbiter, together with the parallel-staged pressure-fed booster” at the November 17 Flax committee meeting. This would be the first time the TAOS configuration, the shuttle design ultimately selected, would be briefed to anyone outside of NASA. Low agreed to come to the second day of the committee’s meeting to make the point that “we can buy the kind of shuttle that we are now proposing within a reasonable total NASA budget, while still at the same time having a strong science and applications program.”28

Before the Flax committee meeting Low also interacted with committee members Fubini and Lewis Branscomb. He found Fubini “on the side of a small glider” on the grounds that “the United States should be satisfied with two or three flights per year. He sees no need for routine operations with men.” That perspective, thought Low, “strongly reflects Ed David’s view.” By contrast, Branscomb was “very much on the other side,” believing that “the United States needs routine operations, and to get these it needs a new recoverable space transportation system.” Branscomb didn’t care “whether or not men are on board, but. . . NASA has told a convincing story that men should be on board.” In connection with the Flax committee session, Low also met with DOD’s Johnny Foster, who had been charged with develop­ing a statement of the rationale behind DOD as well as NASA support of the shuttle, only to discover that “Foster had not yet made up his mind on the value of the shuttle” because it was not a response to “the hiatus in United States space activity during a time that the Soviet Union was bound to have major demonstrable advances in their space flights.” Low’s counter­argument was that “having the shuttle well under development and on the horizon. . . will be a far better position to be in than not having anything to show for the future.” He added “once the shuttle is available, we ought to be able to whip the pants off anybody that does not have this kind of a quick reaction, routine capability.” Given his own ambivalence, Foster had made no progress in developing the shuttle rationale statement that NASA and DOD a month earlier had agreed to prepare.29

As Low attended the second day of the Flax committee meeting on November 18, he drew his operations costs versus development costs curve on the blackboard to make the point that “over the past six months the shuttle has become a much more reasonable vehicle in terms of development costs,” since NASA was “now focusing on a shuttle that will cost between $5 and $6 billion to develop” and from $6-1/2 to $12 million to operate. Low argued that the “smaller, and much lower in development costs, glider should not be considered because it will be so terribly expensive to oper­ate.” The main questions, he suggested, were “whether the shuttle should be small or large and whether it should provide for routine operations or one or two flights per year.” Low thought that most committee members understood his argument, “but if a vote had been taken right then, they would have still voted for the small glider simply because they don’t believe in routine space flight operations.”30

This was the final meeting of the Flax committee, and the group never issued a formal report. Perhaps the committee’s most significant contribution was crystallizing the central issue in the shuttle debate. By this point, there was agreement that some new space transportation system was needed. The committee’s deliberations focused attention on the basic issue of whether that system would include a full capability vehicle capable of launching all U. S. payloads on a routine basis or a smaller vehicle, either a powered shuttle or a glider, to be flown occasionally to test various technologies while also keeping a U. S. program of human space flight alive. As the Flax committee met for the last time, that question remained very much undecided.

The NASA leadership was angered by the idea that OMB, rather than NASA, should define the technical characteristics of the shuttle; that anger intensi­fied when NASA discovered that some of the OMB requirements originated from a NASA shuttle study contractor feeding information to OMB on a confidential basis. Senior NASA official Willis Shapley characterized Rice’s seeking advice from an aerospace firm as “dirty pool in the budget wars.” He added “the one thing that really grated people wrong was that they [OMB] began getting engineering and technical information. . . and con­fronting our technical people with technical judgments.” Low reported that Rice “claimed that the basis for the cost estimates he had were from a con­tractor whose name he could not divulge.” Low called Rice and asked him “specifically to let me know who the contractor was so that we could verify his numbers or see where we, NASA, were going wrong. He refused to do so.” Even in internal OMB correspondence related to the shuttle decision, the source of Rice’s information was referred to only as “your contractor source.” However, Low concluded, “based on the information we have and the questions Rice has asked, it is quite clear that he obtained his information from North American Rockwell.”[11] Low reported that NASA Administrator Fletcher “objected to OMB designing the shuttle strongly”; Fletcher agreed, saying that in his dealings with Rice “the only thing I did resent was his try­ing to design shuttles of his own.”22

Fletcher and Low felt that they had little choice but to begin evaluating a shuttle meeting OMB guidelines. On December 13, Low told Dale Myers that “the Office of Management and Budget has set forth certain concepts and assumptions concerning the Space Shuttle program” and that he and

Fletcher had “made a commitment to provide our assessment of the OMB assumptions and guidelines by December 31, 1971.” He added that the eval­uation of the OMB shuttle should compare it to the configurations NASA still was considering and should assume the use of the new shuttle engine and a reusable pressure-fed booster or, as an alternate, solid rocket motors. Low noted that “the initial development cost is of primary concern. . . Is it possible to start out with one of the smaller (or lighter) payload versions, and then grow to a full capability orbiter later on?”23 There was no emphasis on minimizing the costs of operating the shuttle once it was in service.

Fletcher met with Flanigan on December 14 to protest the OMB direc­tive. When Fletcher asked whether the OMB shuttle characteristics and the $4 billion development cost limit in fact were based on a presidential deci­sion, Flanigan, who had not been at the December 3 meeting, said that he did not think so and that it was more likely that Shultz or Weinberger had thrown out the $4 billion figure and Nixon had said “it’s worth a try.” Flanigan also said that he would check whether there was a presidential decision document that included the shuttle characteristics specified in the OMB guidelines. He did check, and on December 17 told Fletcher that his (Flanigan’s) “understanding of the request put to you regarding a smaller shuttle was correct. None of the figures in the paper given to you [by OMB] are set in concrete.” Rather, he said, “they should be viewed as a new way to approach the problem, against which an initial estimate will have to be made in a couple of weeks.” Flanigan added “there is no written directive from the President on this subject.” In his December 14 meeting with Fletcher and later conversations, Flanigan advised against taking the NASA-OMB disagreement to the president for decision; he knew that Nixon tried to avoid refereeing such confrontations.24