Category After Apollo?

The space shuttle may be the most visible Nixon space legacy, but the con­sequences of the other Nixon administration decisions in the 1969-1972 period have also had pervasive and lasting impacts. A 2012 assessment of NASA’s “strategic direction” observed that:

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is at a transi­tional point in its history. . . The agency’s budget. . . is under considerable stress, servicing increasingly expensive missions and a large, aging infrastructure established at the height of the Apollo program. Other than the long-range goal of sending humans to Mars, there is no strong, compelling national vision for the human spaceflight program, which is arguably the centerpiece of NASA’s spectrum of mission areas. The lack of national consensus on NASA’s most publicly visible mission, along with out-year budget uncertainty, has resulted in the lack of strategic focus necessary for national agencies operat­ing in today’s budgetary reality. As a result, NASA’s distribution of resources may be out of sync with what it can achieve relative to what it has been asked to do.

This review concluded that “there is no national consensus on strategic goals and objectives for NASA.”33 This judgment was echoed in the most recent review of the human space flight program, which observed that “a national consensus on the long-term future of human spaceflight. . . remains elusive.”34

To a significant degree this unsatisfactory condition of the U. S. human space flight program in the second decade of the twenty-first century is a heritage of the policy decisions made by Richard Nixon more than 40 years ago. Approving the space shuttle came without a meaningful national com­mitment to post-Apollo space program objectives—there was no “strategic focus.” George Low in October 1970 had suggested that “with the shuttle the U. S. can have a continuing program of manned space flight. . . without a commitment to a major new manned mission goal.” This proved to be a winning argument; by approving the space shuttle, a capability-justified means for carrying out a variety of space activities, Richard Nixon avoided having to define the long-term space objectives which the shuttle would serve. This lack of guiding goals for the U. S. space program has persisted for more than 40 years, causing many to characterize the program as “adrift.” If this characterization is accepted, it was Richard Nixon that set NASA on that goal-less voyage.

Nixon and his closest advisers gave little attention to the longer term consequences of their decision to put the NASA full-capability space shuttle at the center of the post-Apollo space program. Those consequences were compounded by approving a shuttle design that from NASA’s standpoint was a step toward an eventual space station. The consequences were exacer­bated by setting out an approach to determining the NASA budget that was very likely to result in funding insufficient to support efficient development and operation of both the space shuttle and space station while also fund­ing the space activities they were designed to serve. It was difficult to rally public and political support for the capability-driven approach inherent in the Nixon approach to the post-Apollo space program, and the lack of broad public support for the space program has persisted. The absence of a compel­ling exploration objective or other widely accepted goal has resulted for four decades in a human spaceflight program focused, for uncertain purposes, on developing and operating the shuttle and assembling the space station. Attempts in 1989 and 2004 to set an exploration goal to guide the space program have not taken root, and the fate of the current NASA exploration program is unclear.

There is no simple or immediate remedy to the current situation with respect to the U. S. space program. It will be very difficult to undo the conse­quences of flawed or mistaken policy decisions made more than four decades ago. Some suggest that the government should step aside and allow the U. S. private sector to take the leading role in the U. S. space program, including human exploration. My judgment is that such an approach is unrealistic; only governments can provide resources sufficient to lead the initial stages of a long-term exploration effort, although government-private sector partner­ships (and international cooperation) should certainly be part of that effort. In my view, if the United States is to remain the leader in human space explo­ration it will take committed and continuing presidential leadership of the character provided so long ago by John F. Kennedy, once again singling out the space program for special priority and setting challenging goals, convinc­ing a reluctant public and their representatives in Congress to accept those goals, and then, crucially, committing on a sustained basis the political, human, and financial resources needed to achieve them.35 The alternatives are to continue to drift along, trying to do too much with too little, or, less likely, to lower U. S. ambitions in space to match the funding available. A comprehensive review of the U. S. space program in 2014 once again con­cluded, as had its 2009 and 2012 predecessors, that “the human spaceflight program conducted by the U. S. government today has no strong direction” and that “the long-term future of human spaceflight. . . is unclear.”36 That situation is Richard Nixon’s most fundamental space heritage.

[1] Actually, Borman was joined in the reading by his astronaut colleagues Lovell and Anders.

[2] The Department of Defense also prepared an extensive report on its proposed plans for the 1970s and submitted it to the Space Task Group. That submission, and DOD-specific space issues, will not be discussed in this study.

[3] a “vigorous” program along the lines presented at the meeting by Paine and von Braun, with funding for NASA increasing to between $7 billion by the mid-1970s and $8-10 billion in the latter half of the decade;

[4] The “Grand Tour” mission would fly by Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and perhaps even Pluto. This was possible because of a once-every-175-years alignment of the outer planets. Whether to undertake such a mission was a controversial issue in NASA-White House dealings between 19 69 and 1973, but will not be discussed in this study, which focuses on issues related to post-Apollo human space flight.

[5] “Low – cost opportunities for Presidential initiatives have been suppressed.” Those opportunities included the “prosaic-sounding Apollo Applications

[6] “We should continue to explore the Moon.”

• “We should move ahead with bold exploration of the planets and the uni­verse.” The statement identified as a “major but longer range goal. . . we will eventually send men to explore the planet Mars.”

[7] After NASA decided in 1970 that a future space station would be assembled from shut­tle-launched modules and other components, the 15-foot width also became a requirement related to the size of those space station elements.

[8] $15.4 billion for a flight rate of 56 launches per year, the NASA/DOD mission model;

• $14.6 billion “for the historic flight level of the unmanned U. S. space program of the 1960’s,” corresponding to 51 launches per year; and

• $12.9 billion at a flight rate of 46 launches per year.

[9] “What are the major high risk technology areas?”

• “What trade-offs are implicit in the manned vs. unmanned operation of the space shuttle?”

[10] The space shuttle program. . . represents a technical synthesis which, to a remarkable degree, integrates into a single vehicle system and proposed mode of operation the means for potentially achieving improvements and advances relevant to virtually all foreseeable space program objectives. . . If an enthusiastic, optimistic, and expansionary view is taken of the probable growth of the nation’s military and civilian space programs over the next twenty years. . . the development of the space shuttle as proposed by NASA is undoubtedly the most important and valuable major new space program which could be undertaken at this time.

• The Mk I/Mk II approach [is] a very dubious course of action.

• The Panel has been impressed by the large amount of effort which has been put into the cost analysis of the shuttle program and into the study of the economic cost-benefit justification for the program. Nevertheless, we are unconvinced that such analyses have sufficient credibility to serve as

[11] The author has not been able to find independent evidence supporting Low’s conclusion that North American Rockwell was providing information to OMB counter to what NASA was advocating. This conclusion seems a bit questionable, given that in late 1971 the head of North American Rockwell, Willlard “Al” Rockwell, was visiting the White House to lobby for shuttle approval. But perhaps Rockwell was not aware of the fact that people at the working level within his company were cooperating with OMB.

NASA completed its initial report for the STG on future space transporta­tion requirements in mid-May; the report concluded that “fully reusable or near fully reusable systems offer the maximum potential for an economic and versatile space shuttle system that could readily satisfy a vast majority of future space transportation requirements.” Also, a “reusable space shuttle would provide a broad range of capability in space operations—a capability that is the keystone to the success and growth of future space flight develop­ments for exploration and exploitation of near and far space.”7 The separate Air Force study effort was finished in the same mid-May time frame. The next step in the process was integrating the two studies into a single report, to be submitted to the STG by June 15. Lead responsibility for assembling the final study report was assigned to a national security community sup­port contractor, The Aerospace Corporation; Aerospace staff member Don Dooley led the report-writing effort.

The Air Force was not the only national security organization participating in the shuttle study. Also deeply involved was the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), the organization created in 1961 to develop and operate the highly classified intelligence satellites that provided crucial national security information to the nation’s leadership. In 1969, the very existence of NRO was classified, and thus NRO participation in the shuttle study could not be publicly acknowledged. The director of the NRO was a civilian, usually holding a high-level Air Force position, such as undersecretary or assistant secretary, but because the NRO was classified this responsibility was not acknowledged. The Aerospace Corporation supported not only the space elements of the Air Force but also the activities of the NRO, and thus was well positioned to reflect the interests of both organizations.8

On May 17, Fletcher received a letter from Don Rice, the OMB assistant director with space responsibilities, after the two had met on May 7. To Rice, the letter was the one action that should have made clear to NASA that it had to adjust its plans to the reality of continued budget constraints. At the meeting, Fletcher and Rice had agreed that NASA and OMB would “work together to develop a realistic NASA plan for the future.” Rice agreed to provide NASA with a five-year projection of the budget that NASA was likely to receive, “allowing NASA and OMB management to consider the relative priorities of alternative programs.” Rice realized “that the most difficult aspect of this approach to five-year planning would be to secure agreement between NASA and OMB on the range of overall agency totals which could be considered ‘realistic’ for the five-year period.” He suggested that the then-current NASA budget of $3.2 billion per year might be an appropriate expectation. Rice later reflected that his letter “hit [NASA] like a bombshell,” since a $3.2 billion annual budget for the next half-decade would make it impossible for NASA to develop the shuttle it was then plan­ning. Dale Myers described Rice’s letter as “the single stroke of the pen that knocked out the first stage booster, because you just couldn’t get the two [stages] into the budget.”32

At this point, NASA had been hoping that its annual budget might increase to $4 billion—perhaps even $5 billion—by the mid-1970s. Rice’s suggestion that NASA plan for an annual budget at a significantly lower level was a sobering reminder that the agency had to constrain its future ambi­tions. Among other things, it implied that NASA could not budget more than $1 billion per year for shuttle development and still maintain the bal­anced program that was presidential policy.

By the time he finished his White House visits, Fletcher had come to share George Low’s concern that NASA was not on a sustainable path with respect to the shuttle program. Fletcher, reported Low, “in fact, has asked for the development of a shuttle program that will fit within a $4 billion overall NASA budget.” To Low, an important question was “is there a phasing of the shuttle or, alternatively, a cheaper shuttle that will not reach the very high expenditures in the middle of the decade?” Low worried that despite “pushing this point for about six months now, we have not yet been able to come up with an answer. Perhaps there is no viable answer.” In a thought that would reoccur several times in the following months, Low suggested that perhaps there was no alternative but “the choice of foregoing the shuttle altogether for the 1970’s and starting it in the 1980’s.”33

NASA Administrator Fletcher also met with science adviser David on August 24, separately from the David-Low meeting on the same day, to discuss the best approach to getting a shuttle program approved by the White House. While he had developed a sense of trust with David, he was not sure “how much we could trust OMB” if NASA came in with a budget proposal at the $3.2 billion level through the 1970s, as Don Rice had suggested in May, given the low budget target OMB had provided in early August. Fletcher, as had Low, told David of NASA’s internal discussions of a shuttle program that could be carried out for less than $1 billion per year and a total invest­ment of $5 billion. David advised him to keep that thinking confined to a few people within NASA, and instead to let David propose the low-cost shuttle to OMB, with NASA resisting that proposal. This gambit, thought David, would put NASA in a “better bargaining position.” As Fletcher saw it, the issue was that “OMB can’t entirely be trusted to commit to any kind of program and that if we [NASA] agreed too easily to the low-cost shuttle, they might try to work us down to a smaller budget yet.” David felt that “there was not anyone in OMB who could be completely trusted—not that they were dishonest, but that their sole function was to put a ratchet on the budget and [they] couldn’t make a commitment on anything.”23 Clearly, OMB and OST were not working harmoniously with respect to space issues, and Davis was angling for increased influence within the White House deci­sion process.

As usual, the NASA budget request for FY1973 was due at OMB on September 30. What to request with respect to the space shuttle was a major issue in formulating the budget proposal. Three basic alternatives were con­sidered:

1. A lower-cost glider or mini-shuttle, as suggested by Low in August;

2. The Mark I/Mark II shuttle. Low noted in mid-September that “OMSF [Office of Manned Space Flight] is now focusing on a ‘phased technol­ogy’ Shuttle, wherein today’s technology is used in a Block I version and any more expensive, more sophisticated subsystems are phased in at a later date”;

3. No shuttle at all. Low had considered such an option during August, and during the final two weeks before submitting the budget recorded that “Fletcher and I debated whether we should not forego the shuttle entirely and develop instead some alternate manned space flight program.”

Fletcher and Low finally decided to include “something like the Mark I/ Mark II shuttle,” but to delay the start of shuttle development by approxi­mately six months to “give us more time to reach final decisions on the con­figuration.”24 As it had done a year earlier, NASA would request presidential approval of the space shuttle without being able to specify the shuttle design being approved.

As NASA prepared its budget request, its leaders also concluded that the space agency needed “a new justification for manned space flight.” Low rec­ognized that “during the past year we begged the issue by stating that we needed a new transportation system—a space shuttle—and it just happened to be manned.” It was now time to “try to justify manned flight in its own right.” This shift in emphasis likely reflected James Fletcher’s influence at the top levels of NASA. Discussing the issue, the NASA leadership “agreed that the main justification for manned space flight is the ‘American presence in space’ and not the fact that man can twirl knobs better than machines can.”25 The NASA FY1973 budget request contained funding proposals at three levels—a “minimum recommended program” with budget authority at $3.385 billion and outlays at $3.225 billion, close to the FY1972 levels; an “alternate recommended program” at $3.54 billion in authority and $3.305 billion in outlays; and a budget at the OMB target of $2.975 billion in out­lays. To reach that lowest figure, NASA would cancel Apollo 16 and 17 and not start the space shuttle, actions that would cause “irreparable damage.” NASA argued that “this nation must continue to fly men in space. Man will fly in space, and for many reasons the United States should not forego its responsibility—to itself and to the free world—to take part in this great venture.” This was a theme that would reappear throughout the next few months and would be important to convincing Richard Nixon to approve the shuttle.

The budget letter contained “detailed figures on the effects of the vari­ous program options on unemployment,” an issue that NASA knew was of increasing interest to the White House. The letter pointed out that “the NASA program is labor intensive: small changes in program funding now have immediate, and nearly one for one, effects on employment.” With respect to the space shuttle, NASA told OMB that “the single most impor­tant consideration” was how to “achieve it with lower annual funding in view of continuing severe budget constraints.” NASA’s plan was “to select the optimum shuttle configuration, considering both technical and budgetary factors, next spring, to select the contractor next summer, and to proceed then with development leading to the first manned orbital flight in 1978 or 1979.”

NASA described “a promising configuration that would substantially reduce the funds required prior to the first manned flight.” This was the Mark I/Mark II approach, although those designations were not mentioned in the letter. NASA noted that “the reduction in shuttle development fund­ing will come at the expense of somewhat higher operational costs initially and of delaying by several years the full realization of the planned opera­tional capabilities.” The NASA letter argued that delaying a decision on the shuttle configuration past spring 1972 “would be expensive and unsettling to the aerospace industry, which is forced to maintain a capability to respond to the government until our decisions are reached.”

The budget letter noted that NASA was proposing “run-out costs, in future years, at or below the FY1973 level” of $3.385 billion in new budget authority that NASA was requesting. This “constant budget” was an inven­tion of NASA’s Willis Shapley, and allowed NASA to propose a six-year pro­gram “at a level between $500 million and one billion [per year] below the financial plans presented to OMB and the Congress at the time the FY1972 budget was approved.” NASA’s hope was that OMB would not only approve a new start on the shuttle, but would agree in advance to a constant budget level for the next several years that would provide the space agency with some stability after the several prior years of budget uncertainty.26

In its budget submission, NASA was asking OMB, and ultimately President Nixon, to approve development of a still rather fuzzily defined space shuttle. Fletcher, Low, and their associates fully realized that it would not be easy to get OMB and then the president to approve that request.

As Magruder acknowledged, the New Technology Opportunities effort was in large part an attempt to find employment for those aerospace workers who had lost, or were in danger of losing, their jobs as a result of the Nixon administration’s budget reductions in the defense and space sectors. This was part of a broader concern—that unemployment in states key to Richard Nixon’s reelection in 1972, particularly California, would negatively impact the president’s election prospects. As of late 1971, the leading candidate for the Democratic nomination was Senator Ed Muskie of Maine, and in some polls Nixon was running behind Muskie.

The unemployment issue had been a White House worry since at least early 1971. The concern was that at the time of the 1972 presidential election, the California unemployment rate might be 6.2-6.9 percent, significantly above the national average of 5-5.5 percent. By the end of August 1971, the White House had launched a “California Employment Project.” President Nixon set a goal of creating 100,000 new jobs in California before the election, which would bring California unemployment down to the national aver­age. Nixon had directed that most of those new employment opportunities would be the result of DOD actions. An individual named Fred Foy had been brought into the White House to coordinate efforts in DOD and other government agencies to target job creation in California as a high priority. John Ehrlichman remembered Foy as “a retired business executive” who would go to a community in California and “smoke out. . . opportunities to let contracts on an accelerated basis.” Foy would report back to Flanigan, “who would pick up the phone and talk to the Defense Department and shake things loose.” As a result, “they would accelerate these things and cre­ate jobs by the scores in a relatively small geographic area. The impact was dramatic.” Flanigan’s assistant Jonathan Rose was the White House link to the California Employment Project. Rose in an August 28 memorandum to the president indicated that a “politically loyal” employee in the DOD would provide the White House “bi-weekly reports on the status of the agency’s job creation effort” and that “Governor Reagan’s office has designated a team of competent economists and others” to work with the White House on this effort. That was not enough assurance for Nixon; he asked Cap Weinberger at OMB to “personally stay on the project of jobs for California and that you make sure that there is no let up in the efforts on this.”36

It was becoming clear that the decision to approve the space shuttle would be influenced by job-creation considerations. A member of the California Legislature, Newton Russell, wrote Haldeman in early June 1971, for­warding a letter he had sent to NASA making the case of why the shuttle program “should be located in California.” Among the good reasons were “unemployment, source of supply, available technical engineers” but “if you want to put it down to crass politics. . . California will be a key state in ’72.” Haldeman forwarded Russell’s letter to Weinberger, who responded, saying that “because of all the factors you mentioned. . . I am sure that this [locat­ing the shuttle program in California] will be the case.” Weinberger noted that “there is still a problem in financing the whole project because of all of the overall budget totals,” but that “I am sure that whatever is done will be largely based in California.”37

Low noted that “on the unemployment situation, we are feeding a lot of information, first to Fred Foy, who is working in the White House on just that problem, and also to Jonathan Rose.” He added that “it is clear that a small acceleration of some of the new NASA programs would have a rather dramatic influence on the unemployment situation, particularly on the West Coast.” On November 3, Fletcher had written both Flanigan and Weinberger, noting the employment impacts of the space shuttle program, and especially “the substantial impacts of a possible acceleration of the Mark I/II Shuttle program.” NASA in its September 30 budget submission had proposed a budget level above the “minimum acceptable program” that would accelerate the pace of the shuttle program, thereby creating jobs sooner and in larger numbers than if only the minimal program were funded. The accelerated program increased the FY1973 shuttle budget request from $228 million to $400 million, and resulted in a first shuttle flight in 1977 rather than 1978. Fletcher called particular attention to “the very sharp build up (from 5,600 to 14,300) that would occur in the last six months of calendar year 1973” with the NASA minimal budget, and, more relevant to Richard Nixon’s reelection, “the very substantial increases in 1972 . . . that are possible with the acceleration indicated.”38

In mid-November, NASA sent Don Rice a brief report titled “California employment.” The report noted that “the prime contractors for the shut­tle have not been selected, but the majority of competitors are California firms and so the most favorable employment impact will be in that State.” It added that “historically, NASA spends 50Ф of each dollar in California.” The report noted that “the $500M contract for the rocket motor for the shuttle has already been placed with Rocketdyne (a division of North American Rockwell) in California.” But if the shuttle configuration was changed or if a glider were approved, so that the shuttle engine was not needed, “Rocketdyne says it will have to go out of business.” NASA provided addi­tional employment estimates to Rose on December 1, indicating a variety of NASA-related actions, including accelerating shuttle development, that would result in increased employment.39 NASA by this point recognized that the shuttle’s employment impact could be a decisive consideration in White House thinking.

That impact did not go unnoticed at the top levels of the White House. John Ehrlichman recalled that the issue of shuttle-related employment in Southern California “was a very important consideration in Nixon’s mind. . . I can recall conversations about that, which were highly persuasive. . . You must not underemphasize that element, that employment element, in Nixon’s deci­sion [on the shuttle].” Ehrlichman remembered “the quantitative breakouts of the number of jobs involved. . . When you look at the employment num­bers, and you key them to the battleground states [Those states with electoral votes important to winning the presidency in the 1972 election], the space program has an importance out of proportion to its budget.” Ehrlichman sat “in the Cabinet Room with Nixon, [Secretary of the Treasury John] Connally, and [OMB Director George] Shultz. . . looking at issues. We went all the way across domestic issues, the problems of veterans, the problems of the aged, space, health. . . and putting slides up showing where people were who were concerned about these issues. And then doing an overlay of the battleground states. . . It was very interesting then to see how some of these issues fell out of bed, because the people who were concerned with them were not in battleground states.” In this political exercise “space was way up to the top of the list, along with one or two other issues.”40

There was also a representative of California employment interests with direct access to the White House. Willard “Al” Rockwell, Jr., head of North American Rockwell, one of the contenders for the space shuttle prime contract and with its space operations based in California, was a long-time acquaintance of Richard Nixon and a major contributor to Nixon’s election campaigns. Ehrlichman recalled that “there was kind of a direct line between Nixon and Rockwell, which was important. . . I knew that there was a tight relationship.” Rockwell and one of his top execu­tives, Robert Anderson, visited Flanigan, Weinberger, and Rice in late November to discuss prospects for the shuttle. Flanigan told them that “there would definitely be a shuttle program, that the government was about to make the decision but that there is still some sorting to be done.” Flanigan added that “the big shuttle that NASA supported a year ago was definitely out but that NASA is still not ready to move out now. . . NASA is still not completely in tune with the realities of the day, but is slowly coming around.” The fundamental question, Flanigan told Rockwell, was “whether the shuttle should be a research vehicle or one that is produc­tive.” This was an indication that Flanigan was aware of the NASA-OMB/ OST argument about how best to proceed. When the administration deci­sion on the shuttle was made, indicated Flanigan, there would be “a very soft pronouncement. . . This was so the people in the aerospace industry will clearly see Administration support for their industry, while those not in that industry will not get overly excited.” Apparently Anderson in this meeting had made a case for the shuttle in terms of its being a bailout for the aerospace industry, and Flanigan had responded that this was not a rationale acceptable to the White House, at least publicly. Flanigan wrote Rockwell a few weeks later, saying that “I do hope my taking exception to what seemed to be excessive vehemence on the part of your subordinate [Anderson] regarding the shuttle did not leave the impression that we lack enthusiasm for the concept. I am quite convinced that we will come up with a viable and positive solution on the shuttle in a short period of time.”41

On December 27, Low met with those at NASA headquarters involved in the shuttle program “to discuss the various options of payload size and shape, payload carrying capability, booster options, etc.” On the next day, he held individual meetings with his senior associates to get their frank assessment of the best course to pursue. The decision coming out of these meetings was to accept a slightly less ambitious shuttle design; Low reported that “as a result of these meetings, we decided that we should proceed with a Shuttle that has a 14 x 45′ payload [bay] and a payload carrying capability of 45,000 pounds. We further decided that we should hold open the option of a liquid vs. a solid

booster for another two months.” Jim Fletcher had not been involved in the December 27-28 meetings, but quickly accepted their conclusions. Low observed “from NASA’s point of view, and not necessarily out in the open, the size and weight we picked could do most NASA missions and some of the DOD missions, but particularly would have the growth capability to the full size Shuttle should such a decision be made at a later date.”2

Richard Nixon made it clear to his associates that he did not want the post – Apollo space effort appear to take money away from government programs on Earth. As the March 1970 statement outlining his space policy was being prepared, Nixon stressed that it should avoid “positive statements on space” being “invidiously” compared to his attitude toward “problems in poverty and social problems here on earth.” He did not want to be seen as “taking money away from social programs and the needs of the people here [on Earth] to fund spectacular crash programs out in space.” Nixon was a care­ful reader of opinion polls and other indications of public sentiment, and his generalized sense that space achievements were part of “exploring the unknown” did not override his sense that an ambitious space program was not something that would gain political support. He was not interested in leading the nation to accept an ambitious post-Apollo space effort.

This perspective was applied in an ad hoc fashion to budget decisions on the NASA program in December 1969 and January 1970, and space did not fare well as it competed for funding with other Nixon administra­tion priorities in the overall context of an imperative to balance the federal budget. In parallel with the chaotic Fiscal Year 1971 budget process, there was a move to formalize the approach the Nixon administration would take to setting the priority of post-Apollo space efforts. The result was what has been characterized in this study as the “Nixon space doctrine,” clearly stated in the March 7, 1970, presidential statement on space. Characterizing this statement as a “doctrine” may be rather overstating the reality; it was more an after-the-fact rationalization of the perspectives that led Nixon and his associates to reject the recommendations of the Space Task Group and even in the aftermath of the Apollo success to continue to reduce the NASA bud­get. But in the sense that the framework for space decision making set out in the Nixon statement has in its essence been accepted by most presidents since, it can be said to deserve being called a “doctrine.”

The Nixon space doctrine had two elements. The first was to change the status of the space program from an effort formally assigned the highest national priority, as had been the case during Apollo, to just one of many “normal” government activities. In the language of the space statement: “We must think of them[space activities] 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.” Space was to become “a normal and regular part of our national life.”

The second element of the doctrine was to declare that the space program from 1970 forward would have to compete with other discretionary govern­ment activities for priority and corresponding budgetary support. The space statement said: “Space expenditures must take their proper place within a rigorous system of national priorities. What we do in space from here on in. . . must therefore be planned in conjunction with all of the other under­takings which are also important to us.”

The “Joint DOD/NASA Study of Space Transportation Systems” was sub­mitted to the STG on June 16, 1969. The three-volume report was (and still is) classified “Secret.” A separate “Summary Report” shared the same classi­fication for 30 years, but was declassified in 1999; the following information is extracted from that declassified document.9

The study team provided an extremely positive assessment of the poten­tials of the space shuttle and reusable upper stages to carry payloads from the shuttle to higher orbits; the combination was called the Space Transportation System (STS). Its report concluded that “the development of an STS is needed to provide a major reduction in operating costs and an increased capability for national space missions.”

NASA from 1969 on had stressed that the overriding objective of the shuttle program was to lower the cost of space launch and operations. By empha­sizing the lower cost aspect of shuttle use rather than the new capabilities it would provide and its role in maintaining a human presence in space, NASA left itself open to having the shuttle evaluated on economic grounds. Indeed, the Bureau of the Budget (BOB) in March 1970 had asked: “Is full scale development of a new launch system to reduce the cost of payload in orbit economically justifiable?” That question set in motion a process of eco­nomic analysis that would parallel shuttle technical studies throughout 1970 and 1971. The impact of the economic analyses would come to be seen, in George Low’s words, as “important and unfortunate.”34

In his cover letter transmitting this question, BOB Director Robert Mayo told NASA to use a 10 percent “discount rate” in comparing future benefits of the shuttle program with the current investment required to obtain them and with other uses of that amount of funds.35 One way of looking at the discount rate is as representing the equivalent for a government program of the interest that a private investment would have to earn in order to be justified. The discount rate used determined how much in future benefits was required to justify a current investment. A 10 percent discount rate was associated with a particularly risky government program, one with uncertain future benefits; this was the category in which BOB placed the space shuttle program.

Critical to showing a high level of future benefits from the space shuttle was a high flight rate, since each shuttle flight would save money compared to the use of an expendable launch vehicle to launch the same mission. Additional savings would also come from the reduced costs of payloads for many missions. Thus it soon became evident that to justify the shuttle in economic terms, there had to be very active U. S. civilian and national security space programs in the 1980s, and the shuttle would have to launch essentially all flights in those programs. The shuttle would also have to be complemented by a space tug so that the combination could carry out the many missions to geosynchronous and other high orbits. Thus developing a plausible “mission model” for future space activities was a key starting point for an economic analysis; the benefits from flying the missions in that model, when compared with a forecast of the one-time costs required to develop a shuttle and the anticipated lower costs of operating it, would allow a judg­ment of whether the shuttle was a justifiable investment at the 10-percent discount rate.

As NASA submitted its budget request, it did not know that President Nixon had already made a tentative decision that NASA’s budget for FY1973 would be in the $3.3-$3.4 billion range, with a strong bias toward approving space shuttle development. That decision originated with OMB Deputy Director Cap Weinberger and had been approved by the president. But that informa­tion had not been communicated to the White House technical and budget staffs, much less to NASA, and thus had little impact on NASA’s interactions with OMB and OST over the next four months.

Weinberger had discovered as he met with Fletcher on August 5 that the budget target for NASA that had been recommended by his staff would mean the eventual end of the U. S. human space flight program. This was not an acceptable option to Weinberger, and on August 12 he had sent a thoughtful memorandum to President Nixon. That memorandum is worth quoting at some length.

Present tentative plans call for major reductions or change in NASA, by elimi­nating the last two Apollo flights (16 and 17), and eliminating or sharply

reducing the balance of the Manned Space Program (Skylab and Space Shuttle)

and many remaining NASA programs.

I believe this would be a mistake.

1. The real reason for sharp reductions in the NASA budget is that NASA is entirely in the 28% of the budget that is controllable. In short we cut it because it is cuttable, not because it is doing a bad job or an unnecessary one.

2. We are being driven, by the uncontrollable items, to spend more and more on programs that offer no hope for the future: Model Cities, OEO [Office of Employment Opportunity], Welfare, interest on the National Debt, unemployment compensation, Medicare, etc. Of course, some of these have to be continued, in one form or another, but essentially they are pro­grams, not of our choice, designed to repair mistakes of the past, not of our making.

3. We do need to reduce the budget, in my opinion, but we should not make all our reduction decisions on the basis of what is reducible, rather than on the merits of individual programs.

4. There is real merit to the future of NASA, and its proposed programs. The Space Shuttle and NERVA particularly offer the opportunity, among other things, to secure substantial scientific fall-out for the civilian economy at the same time that large numbers of valuable (and hard-to-employ – elsewhere) scientists and technicians are kept at work. . . It is very difficult to re-assemble the NASA teams should it be decided later, after major stop­pages, to re-start some of the long-range programs.

5. Recent Apollo flights have been very successful from all points of view. Most important is the fact that they give the American people a much needed lift in spirit (and the people of the world an equally needed look at American superiority). Announcement now, or very shortly, that we were cancelling Apollo 16 and 17 . . . would have a very bad effect, coming so soon after Apollo 15’s triumph. It would be confirming, in some respects, a belief that I fear is gaining credence at home and abroad: that our best years are behind us, that we are turning inward, reducing our defense commitments, and voluntarily starting to give up our super-power status, and our desire to maintain our world superiority. America should be able to afford something besides increased welfare, programs to repair our cit­ies, or Appalachian relief and the like.

6. I do not propose that we necessarily fund all NASA seeks—only that if we decide to eliminate Apollo 16 and 17, that we couple any announcement to that effect with announcements that we are going to fund space shuttles, NERVA, or other major, future NASA activities.

7. I believe I can find enough reductions in other programs to pay for con­tinuing NASA at generally the $3.3-$3.4 billion level.27

Richard Nixon read Weinberger’s memorandum and wrote on it a cryptic message, “I agree with Cap.” He also wrote “OK” next to point 7. What exactly he meant by these notations was not clear. A month later, one of Haldeman’s staff provided some clarification, telling OMB Director Shultz that the “the President read with interest and agreed with Mr. Weinberger’s memorandum of August 12, 1971, on the subject of the future of NASA. Further, the President approved Mr. Weinberger’s plan to find enough reductions in other programs to pay for NASA at generally the 3.3-3.4 bil­lion dollar level.”28

If the NASA leadership had known of Weinberger’s memorandum and Nixon’s response, they likely would have been much less nervous about the outcome of NASA’s negotiations with OMB over the FY1973 budget. The Weinberger memorandum represented one of several points in 1971 when it could be said that a decision to approve space shuttle development had been made. But if there was such a decision made on the basis of the memo, it was to approve the idea of a space shuttle, not a specific shuttle design. NASA in its budget submission left itself vulnerable to continued debate over what shuttle design merited presidential approval by its admission that it would take another six months to make the configuration choice. That debate was not long in coming.