Category After Apollo?

The OMB decision memorandum on NASA’s program for President Nixon, revised on the basis of comments from various offices in the White House and Executive Office of the President, was ready on December 2.7 The memo began with a section on why decisions were needed:

• “The lead times are gone to decide what to do after Apollo.”

• “Industry wants decisions one way or the other, particularly on the Space Shuttle—on which contractors have been doing design studies for the last 18 months.”

• “Adjusting space spending and turning NASA’s capabilities to other domes­tic problems requires a 2-3 year phasing.” (This was an indication that a lead NASA role in William Magruder’s New Technology Opportunities effort was still a possibility.)

The eight-page memo both described NASA’s human space flight pro­gram as proposed in the agency’s September 30 budget request and OMB’s alternative. The alternative program included “a smaller and less costly Space Shuttle,” cancellation of Apollo 16 and 17 “because we understand that is your [Nixon’s] wish,” and “reduction in the size of NASA’s institutional base after calendar 1972.” With respect to NASA’s plans for the shuttle, OMB asked “since we already have the capability to put manned and unmanned payloads into earth orbit using expendable boosters, how much should we be willing to pay for a Shuttle?”

The memo noted “last year NASA was proposing a $10-$12 B [billion] Shuttle. In response to questions from OMB and OST about whether the benefits justified such a large investment, NASA has since designed a $6 B Shuttle which can do all the missions of the larger, more expensive one . . . (We think both costs are underestimated, perhaps by 50%.)” If NASA were given approval to develop the shuttle it was proposing, suggested OMB, “one pro­gram, the Shuttle, would dominate NASA for the coming decade, as did Apollo in the 1960’s.”

What OMB was proposing as a “smaller reduced cost” alternative to NASA’s shuttle would involve “an investment of $4-5 billion over the next 8 years.” Such a vehicle, OMB suggested, could “capture about 80% of the payloads of the redesigned larger Shuttle at about two-thirds of the investment cost.” By this time OMB had accepted that there would be a space shuttle program rather than a glider or some other alternative, and was focusing on keeping the shuttle as inexpensive as possible in investment terms; there was little attention given by either OMB or NASA to an exami­nation of shuttle operating costs, which in any event would be incurred after the Nixon administration left office. It would be necessary to “retain the reliable Titan III expendable booster to launch the few largest payloads that would not fit the smaller Shuttle. These include space telescopes and large intelligence satellites. (This may be desirable in any event since, for national security purposes, we may not want all our eggs in one basket.)” OMB added, reflecting the White House interest in California employment, that “we understand from NASA that the recently awarded engine contract with Rocketdyne division of North American Rockwell will probably be contin­ued for the smaller Shuttle without the need for recompetition.”

The OMB-proposed program also included three Earth orbital missions using launch vehicles and spacecraft left over from the Apollo program. Only one of these missions, the 1975 docking mission with a Soviet spacecraft, had been in NASA’s September 30 “minimum acceptable” budget proposal. The other two would be Earth resources survey missions that had been included in NASA’s September 30 “alternate recommended program,” which pre­sumed a higher budget level; OMB suggested them as a way of having one human spaceflight mission per year between 1974 and 1976, thereby avoid­ing a multiyear gap in U. S. human space flight activity. The smaller shuttle was anticipated to be ready for flight by 1978. With respect to Apollo 16 and 17, while the OMB alternative program canceled the missions on the basis that that was the president’s wish, the memo actually argued for retaining the missions. Saying “if concerns about complications during 1972 [Nixon’s already planned visits to China and the Soviet Union and the presidential election] can be alleviated by rescheduling Apollo 16, it would seem appro­priate to retain Apollo 16 and 17 for their scientific returns and employ­ment impacts.” OMB estimated that the employment impact of adopting its proposed alternative program would be 4,000 job losses by mid-1972 and 8,000 by the end of the year, but 30,000 by mid-1975. In OMB’s recom­mended program, the NASA budget for FY1973 would be $3.050 billion, declining to $2.975 billion by FY1976.

The “recommended next step” was for “OMB and OST to work with NASA on the reorientation of the space program.” The memorandum asked President Nixon to either “Approve” or “Disapprove” four actions:

1. “Initiate reduced-cost smaller Space Shuttle program.”

2. “Conduct Soviet docking mission.”

3. “Conduct other manned earth-orbital missions.”

4. “Apollo 16 and 17”

• “Cancel both missions”

• “Cancel just Apollo 16”

• “Reschedule Apollo 16 and fly both.”

Notably, OMB did not provide the president the option of approving NASA’s shuttle plans.

The OMB memorandum was discussed on December 3 as Ehrlichman, Shultz, and Cap Weinberger met with President Nixon at the Southern White House in Key Biscayne, Florida. There is no recording of the meeting, since Nixon had not set up a taping system in his office at Key Biscayne, but as was his custom Ehrlichman took notes.

With respect to Apollo 16 and 17, Nixon suggested that it would be better to combine the two missions after the 1972 election, but that his aides should “work it out.” Apollo 16 was scheduled for March 1972, but Nixon suggested moving the launch to April to avoid any possibility of its interfering with his planned 1972 trip to China. (Nixon went to China between February 21 and 28; the Apollo 16 mission was launched on April 16.) Nixon on November 24 had already approved going ahead with Apollo 17; with this discussion of rescheduling the Apollo 16 mission, the pos­sibility of canceling one or both of the missions, a long-held Nixon wish, disappeared.

With respect to OMB’s proposal for a smaller shuttle, Ehrlichman recorded Nixon’s response simply as “yes,” providing that the vehicle would use the “California engine.”8 The effect of Nixon saying “yes” to the smaller shuttle was to approve the recommendation that “OMB and OST proceed to work with NASA on a reorientation of the space program.” That process would take place during the rest of December.

From a White House perspective, the December 29 meeting on the space shuttle had resulted in a definitive enough decision that there would be a space shuttle program to begin preparing for a presidential announcement of his approval of the shuttle. As those preparations began, there were two open questions: what should the presidential statement say and whether the space shuttle program should be given a distinctive name, just as prior U. S. human space flight programs had been christened Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo.

With respect to the first issue, NASA’s Fletcher had been alerted by the White House during the New Year’s weekend of the possibility of a presiden­tial announcement. The decision to make that announcement was “firmed up” during the January 3 meeting in Shultz’s office, and Flanigan asked NASA to prepare a draft statement. Even before this request, Fletcher and Jonathan Rose of Flanigan’s office had also asked Bill Anders to start work­ing on the presidential statement. Even though Fletcher and Low also pre­pared draft statements, it was the Anders draft that was the primary basis of the final presidential statement. With respect to the second issue, naming the space shuttle program, the decision was left to Richard Nixon himself.18

It was this combination of short and longer-term considerations—the cre­ation of jobs in California before the 1972 election, the interest in poten­tial national security uses of the space shuttle, and the desire to continue a human space flight program that would demonstrate U. S. space leadership to the world and be a source of national pride at home—that led to Richard Nixon’s approval of NASA’s full capability shuttle. Other factors, such as the ability of the shuttle to operate routinely and at greatly reduced costs, were not greatly influential as Nixon and his top advisers made that choice, even though they became the publicly offered justifications for shuttle devel­opment. So an evaluation of the shuttle’s impact on the American space program must begin with an assessment of the shuttle program in terms of those objectives that were the proximate reasons for the choice of the NASA – preferred shuttle.

.Axting Administrator George Low in January 1971 characterized the NASA Fiscal Year (FY) 1972 budget request sent to Congress as one of tran­sition from the program of the 1960s to the programs of the 1970s. This was indeed the case, as the budget request formalized canceling two Apollo missions and deferring space station development, and suggested that at least in principle the Nixon administration intended to move forward with a space shuttle program as the central U. S. space effort in the 1970s.

This was only one of the transitions taking place in the first months of 1971. The White House finally selected Tom Paine’s successor as NASA administrator. He was Dr. James Fletcher, the president of the University of Utah. Fletcher’s nomination was submitted to the Senate in February, he was confirmed in March, sworn in by the president in April, and took over NASA in the first days of May. Fletcher and George Low, who stayed on as deputy administrator, became a very effective team in leading the space agency through the tortuous process over the second half of the year, ulti­mately resulting in presidential approval of the shuttle that NASA wanted to develop.

In another potential transition, a White House initiative created some­thing of an identity crisis for NASA. President Nixon and his advisers were interested in developing technology-based solutions to major societal prob­lems, and seriously considered transforming NASA into a general applied science agency—a “new NASA”—to take on that responsibility. Fletcher and Low assessed the desirability of NASA’s assuming such a role while still also maintaining its aeronautics and space responsibilities, and decided to respond positively if asked by the president to take on added missions.

Finally, there was a major transition in NASA’s thinking about the char­acter of the space shuttle program it would put forward for presidential approval. At the start of 1971, NASA Associate Administrator for Manned Space Flight Dale Myers had decided to press forward with a two-stage fully reusable shuttle design meeting all national security requirements. But by mid-year the combination of Fletcher and Low recognizing that NASA was very unlikely to get White House approval of the funding required for such a

development and growing concern among NASA’s engineering staff regard­ing the technical challenges associated with simultaneously developing both the shuttle booster stage and the shuttle orbiter led NASA to abandon the fully reusable design. There followed a rather frenzied search for an alterna­tive that presented the best combination of development and operating costs to make the shuttle cost-effective while still preserving all shuttle capabilities that NASA and the national security community sought.

NASA’s move toward phased development of the space shuttle was a clear indication that the shuttle studies to that point had failed to identify a shuttle design that would both fit within the anticipated budget during the 1970s and that NASA’s engineers were confident could be successfully developed. This realization put the space agency in a rather difficult position. A year had been spent studying shuttle designs that turned out to be neither politically nor technically acceptable. Yet Jim Fletcher and George Low were convinced that a decision to go ahead with the shuttle had to be made by the end of 1971 if NASA were to hold together the engineering design and devel­opment teams, both within the agency and in its contractors, required to undertake the shuttle program. They found themselves, six months before that deadline, without a specific shuttle design to put forward for approval. Fletcher and Low at several points in summer 1971 gave serious consid­eration to pulling the plug on seeking approval for shuttle development, instead putting forward some alternative, less ambitious human space flight effort during the 1970s. Ultimately they rejected this fallback position and decided to press forward with the attempt to find a shuttle program that both made sense in terms of NASA’s future ambitions and was acceptable to the White House. Meanwhile, there were several related developments that would influence the eventual outcome of the shuttle decision process.

In late October, there was an unexpected external intervention in the shuttle decision process. Mathematica, the Princeton-based company that NASA had selected to carry out an independent analysis of the cost-effectiveness of a space shuttle, had submitted its final report with respect to the two-stage fully reusable shuttle concept in summer 1971. But this submittal came after

NASA had already decided to abandon the fully reusable approach and to examine alternative shuttle designs. The Mathematica report had made the point that while the two-stage fully reusable design was marginally cost- effective, it was not necessarily the optimum shuttle design from an eco­nomic perspective. NASA had decided to extend Mathematical work to examine the economic dimensions of the alternate shuttle concepts during the extended study period.

The person in day-to-day charge of the Mathematica effort was economist Klaus Heiss. During September, Heiss visited with two of the study contrac­tors, McDonnell Douglas and Grumman, to get information on the alterna­tives being examined by the two companies. Each firm had been allowed by NASA to allocate 10 percent of its study effort to a shuttle concept in which an orbiter with an external propellant tank was carried to orbit by the power of its own engines combined for the initial few minutes of the flight with the much higher thrust of one or two conventional rockets attached to the orbiter or its propellant tank, all engines firing from the launch pad on. McDonnell Douglas had labeled its concept rocket-assisted takeoff (RATO); Grumman, thrust-assisted hydrogen-oxygen (TAHO) takeoff. Heiss got cost and other data on those configurations and other designs under study from the two companies and also from a third study contractor, Lockheed. He used that information as input to the complex computer-based model that Mathematica had developed for its shuttle-related work. (Heiss did not interact with the fourth shuttle study contractor, North American Rockwell, because he “was convinced from the beginning that they would win the competition.” Apparently, he was aware of the bias toward awarding the shuttle contract to a California firm.) Heiss discovered that “whatever space program [mission model] you used and even if you changed interest rates from five percent to ten percent to fifteen percent, again and again and again the same configura­tion came out” as economically preferred—the RATO/TAHO approach. He labeled this concept TAOS (thrust-assisted orbiter shuttle).16

Heiss faced a dilemma with respect to what to do with that finding. The second Mathematica report was not due until the end of January 1972, and by that time a decision on the space shuttle design might have been reached. He was aware of the conflicts between OMB and NASA over shuttle approval, and thought that his findings could help resolve the debate. Heiss told Bob Lindley that “I’m going to do something that maybe I’m not supposed to, but since it’s so clear. . . I’m going to write up my conclusions in fifteen or twenty pages and send that to [NASA Administrator] Fletcher.” Heiss chose not to route his analysis through Dale Myers, believing that Myers and his team were still trying to find a way to get approval for some version of a two-stage shuttle in order to have enough work to occupy both Houston and Huntsville.17

The Heiss memorandum, dated October 28, 1971, was titled “Factors for a Decision on a New Reusable Space Transportation System.” It was co­signed by Oskar Morgenstern, Mathematica’s head. The memo led off with three conclusions, all emphatically stated in capital letters:

1. A REUSABLE SPACE TRANSPORTATION SYSTEM IS ECONOMICALLY FEASIBLE, ASSUMING THAT THE LEVEL OF UNMANNED U. S. SPACE ACTIVITY WILL NOT BE LESS THAN IT HAS BEEN ON THE AVERAGE OVER THE LAST EIGHT YEARS.

2. AMONG THE MANY SPACE SHUTTLE CONFIGURATIONS SO FAR INVESTIGATED, AND WHICH ARE DEEMED TO BE TECHNOLOGICALLY FEASIBLE, A THRUST ASSISTED ORBITER SHUTTLE (TAOS) WITH EXTERNAL HYDROGEN/OXYGEN TANKS EMERGES AT PRESENT AS THE ECONOMICALLY PREFERRED CHOICE.

3. THE DEMAND FOR SPACE TRANSPORTATION IN THE 1980’S BY THE NATIONAL AERONAUTICS AND SPACE ADMINISTRATION, THE DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE, BUT PARTICULARLY BY COMMERCIAL AND OTHER USERS IS THE BASIS FOR THE ECONOMIC JUSTIFICATION FOR THE TAOS PROGRAM.

The memorandum noted that “in part the choice of the current Mark I-Mark II approach was forced by a peak funding requirement for space shuttle development of, say, $1 billion per year. In this approach, however, several important parts of the system would be postponed in some configurations while other configurations with the same total funding requirement assure an early IOC [initial operating capability] date not only of the space shuttle alone, but also of the space tug" It suggested that “the non-recurring costs of TAOS are estimated by industry to be $6 billion or less” and noted that the TAOS configuration would promise “the same capabilities as the original two-stage shuttle.” Heiss added that “the most economic TAOS would use the advanced orbiter engines immediately” and that “the cost per launch of TAOS can be as low as $6 million or less.” The memo thus concluded that “TAOS practically assures NASA of a reusable space transportation system with major objectives achieved"1

It is difficult to judge the impact of the Heiss memorandum on the ulti­mate decision regarding the shuttle program. A version of the TAOS con­cept was indeed the shuttle configuration selected for development. Heiss suggests that “as soon as Fletcher read” his memo, he concluded “that’s the solution to this problem” and “ran all over town with it,” going first to OMB and saying “this group of outside people finds that this makes sense, so why do you fool around with this negative attitude?” Fletcher himself suggested that the Mathematica work reflected in the memo “did influence the decision in the sense that if it had come out negative, we’d have been in trouble.” But, he added, “the Mathematica stuff all along was really supportive of our decision, not determinative.”19 The memorandum did not make its way to those managing the shuttle studies at the Manned Spacecraft Center, who were interacting directly with their study contrac­tors in evaluating the final shuttle configuration. The TAOS concept they ultimately adopted likely reached them through those interactions, not as a result of the Heiss intervention. As the shuttle debate continued in the last two months of 1971, there were few, if any, references in the interactions between NASA, OMB, OST, and the White House to this memorandum or to the economic analyses it reported. It seems as if the Mathematica memo was one, but only one, of the influences that converged on the concept of a “thrust assisted” shuttle orbiter as the best technical choice for a new space transportation capability.

Although NASA’s Fletcher and Deputy Secretary of Defense David Packard had agreed in October that NASA and DOD would work together to develop a restated rationale for the shuttle, by the start of December little progress had been made in this effort. One problem was that Johnny Foster, DOD’s director of defense research and engineering, who had been charged with preparing the rationale paper, remained ambivalent about a DOD commit­ment to the shuttle and to NASA’s approach to selling it. Talking with George Low at a December 1 dinner party, Foster had suggested that NASA was “doing the wrong things,” saying that “NASA should not let OMB impose an arbitrary cost limit on the shuttle. Dictating technical decisions through the budget process is just plain wrong.” He added “it is even worse if NASA lets OMB dictate the shuttle configuration.” Foster suggested that “NASA has decided to build a taxi to nowhere on faith. We should instead have a flight program that demonstrates the need” for the shuttle. Low’s retort was that “the main lack was in presenting an imaginative military space program taking advantage of the new capabilities that the shuttle would represent.”9 Foster’s advice was hardly useful to NASA, faced as it was with what seemed to be an unchangeable upper limit on the budget that the White House was willing to allocate for its activities. But NASA did not give up its attempt to get DOD support; rather, it took on itself the role of suggest­ing the “imaginative military space program” that Low had suggested was needed. That program came in the form of a memorandum for Fletcher to send to Packard. The memo was drafted by NASA’s Assistant Administrator for DOD and Interagency Affairs Jacob Smart, a retired four-star Air Force general. Smart’s draft noted that “in the next few weeks the President will make decisions relating to national objectives in space” that would be of “critical importance, because the nation’s military security, its political, eco­nomic and social well being in this and succeeding decades, are inextricably interwoven with what we do and what we fail to do in space.” He forecast dire consequences if the United States did not maintain a position of space leadership: “the self confidence of our people would diminish, our posture in the world community will be overshadowed, and our trade in world markets will be reduced,” resulting in “problems of great magnitude and complexity” which would “likely face this government, particularly DOD.” As noted in chapter 9, Smart in his draft detailed a number of ways in which “the space shuttle can deliver, with few exceptions, the total traffic of presently-planned military spacecraft to useful earth orbits.”10

Smart’s suggestions for potential national security uses of the space shut­tle were very similar to the ideas in the initial June 1969 DOD-NASA study of shuttle uses. They had been in the background of the discussions between the two agencies over shuttle design ever since, but apparently had had little influence on the assessment of the shuttle by the OMB civilian space staff. However, those potentialities were indeed known to and of interest to the top levels in the White House, including Richard Nixon. Ehrlichman in a 1983 interview suggested that “what the military could do with the larger bay in terms of the use of satellites” and the fact that “the space shuttle would have the capability of capturing satellites or recovering them” had “a strong influence on me” and “weighed into my attitude toward the larger shuttle. And I feel it is valid to say it also weighed into Nixon’s” attitude.11 What is not clear was how, and when, Nixon, Ehrlichman, and perhaps also Flanigan, Shultz, and Weinberger, were made aware of the national security potentials of the shuttle; because the issues involved were highly classified, any relevant documents are not contained in accessible archives. But as final decisions on shuttle size were reached at the end of December, the presi­dent’s interest in national security uses of shuttle capability were known to his other senior associates and very likely influenced their willingness to go forward with NASA’s full capability space shuttle.

It is not clear whether the Fletcher-Packard memorandum was ever sent; a final copy does not appear in NASA’s files. But the memo stands as an example of the arguments that NASA was using in its effort to insure DOD support of the shuttle program. Fletcher and Smart did meet with Foster and several of his associates on December 3. But no formal statement of DOD views on the shuttle sent to the president in December 1971 was located in research for this study, and there is no record of a meeting with the president to discuss this issue.12

Nixon on November 24 had indicated that he should announce his approval of shuttle development “out in California where you are going to put it.” Fortuitously, Nixon was scheduled to fly to California on the evening of January 3 in advance of a January 6 meeting at the Western White House in San Clemente with Japanese Prime Minister Eisaku Sato. His presence there provided the opportunity for an early announcement of shuttle approval.

There was some initial confusion at the White House about what actually was being announced. On December 30, Nixon’s political advisor Charles “Chuck” Colson initiated a proposal that President Nixon should visit the Rocketdyne plant in Canoga Park, California, to “announce the initiation of research on engines for the space shuttle.” Colson had not realized that the announcement would deal with the shuttle overall, not just its new engine. He also was seemingly unaware that the engine contract award was being protested by Rocketdyne’s competitor, Pratt & Whitney, and thus it would have been inappropriate for the president to visit the Rocketdyne plant. When these realities were recognized, the Colson recommendation was quickly withdrawn in favor of a December 31 proposal by Peter Flanigan that Nixon meet with Fletcher and Low on January 4 (soon changed to January 5) “to discuss the decision to go ahead with the shuttle program which will insure the continuation and expansion of thousands of additional jobs in the space industry. This announcement is particularly significant to Southern California.” Once again, the employment impact of starting the shuttle was identified as of high importance. Flanigan’s schedule proposal noted that “at a recent budget session in Key Biscayne [likely referring to the December 3 meeting, since there were no other budget sessions on the president’s published calendar while Nixon was in Key Biscayne between Christmas and New Year’s Day] the decision was made to go ahead with the space shuttle program. Some of the mechanics in implementing the pro­gram have still to this moment not been completely resolved, but will be on Monday, January 3.”19

In its 135 flights between April 1981 and July 2011, the space shuttle was undoubtedly the public face of the U. S. space program, communicat­ing to the nation and the world an image of U. S. technological capability and American leadership. The shuttle orbiters carried 355 different people into orbit, including 306 men and 49 women, with many making multi­ple flights; two U. S. astronauts each flew on seven shuttle missions. The relatively nonstressful conditions of launching aboard the shuttle opened up the experience of space flight to scientists and engineers, and also to a few politicians, teachers, and industry representatives, not just to test pilots. Astronauts from 16 countries flew aboard the shuttle, thereby fulfilling Richard Nixon’s “pet idea” of flying non-U. S. people on a U. S. spacecraft. (In fact, while Nixon wanted only the symbolism connected with flying non – Americans on a NASA spacecraft, his interest opened the door to intimate international participation in the U. S. human space flight program, leading to the European Spacelab effort and the Canadian robotic arm on the shut­tle, the U. S.-Soviet Apollo-Soyuz Test Project, and eventually to the 15-part­ner International Space Station (ISS).) Of the shuttle’s 135 missions, 37 were dedicated to assembling and outfitting the ISS; maintaining the capability to launch space station elements had been a NASA “bottom line” in the final stages of the shuttle debate. Demonstrating the unique capabilities offered by the shuttle, other missions launched, repaired, and recovered satellites, most notably the Hubble Space Telescope, sent probes to the Sun, Venus, and Jupiter, launched other telescopes to observe the universe, and hosted on-orbit research. There were nine shuttle dockings with the Soviet/Russian space station Mir. Unfortunately, two missions ended in catastrophe; in each, seven crew members lost their lives.

The shuttle was and continues to be a source of considerable pride for U. S. citizens. Images of a shuttle launch are global symbols of American accom­plishment and technological leadership, and even after they have been retired from service the three remaining shuttle orbiters—Discovery, Atlantis, and Endeavour—are objects with high public appeal. In terms of its political impact and of offering unmatched capabilities for space operations, the space shuttle was a resounding success. The space shuttle met the objective of keeping Americans flying in space as a source of national prestige and pride; the capabilities offered by the shuttle made the United States the unques­tioned leader in human space flight.

As George Low had led NASA through the process of developing the agen­cy’s FY1972 budget request, at the White House Peter Flanigan continued his search for a person to take on the administrator’s job on a permanent basis. By late 1970 two promising candidates had been identified—Frank Jameson, president of Teledyne-Ryan Aeronautical Corporation in San Diego, California and James Fletcher, president of the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, Utah. Neither had been on the White House radar screen a few months earlier. The White House ran background checks on the two. Director of personnel Fred Malek reported the results to Flanigan on January 6, 1971, noting that there had been “no attempt to contact the candidates” and “no attempt to determine their political philosophy.” Of Jameson, Malek reported that he was known as “an accomplished and marketing-oriented executive” and “an extroverted, hale, hearty, and well-met type of individ­ual,” but “not generally well regarded for his administrative skill.” This led Malek to suggest “if we are seeking a tough minded, control-oriented, inside executive, to really manage the agency, Frank Jameson would not seem to be a top choice.” With respect to Fletcher, Malek reported that he had “a unique combination of management and technical skills,” was “intelligent, articulate, and a proven leader of technical people,” and was “reported to have an uncanny ability to embrace a large spectrum of diverse business and technical activities simultaneously.”1

The suggestion of Jameson for the NASA position had come from House Minority Leader Gerald Ford (R-MI). Supporting Fletcher was Senator Wallace Bennett (R-UT). In addition to their Utah and Mormon connec­tions, Fletcher and Bennett were related by marriage; Bennett’s daughter was married to Fletcher’s brother. In early February, Bob Haldeman asked Flanigan “what’s the status of NASA? Gerry Ford is pushing Jameson. Have we got a candidate yet or is that still hanging fire?” Flanigan responded a few days later that “Gerry Ford has been informed. . . that Jameson is not getting the position. Subject to clearance Jim Fletcher will.”2

On February 17, Flanigan formally recommended to President Nixon that he nominate Fletcher as NASA administrator. He told Nixon that of “a large number of candidates proposed for the post,” Fletcher “appears to be by far the strongest.” Flanigan noted that in his role as president of the University of Utah Fletcher “has had unusual success in running the university while pla­cating both radical and conservative students.” He also noted that Fletcher, a physicist and engineer with a doctorate from the California Institute of Technology, had served for many years as a member of the President’s Science Advisory Committee (PSAC). He alerted the president that Fletcher had just been offered the position of chancellor at the new University of California campus in San Diego, and thus it was important “to assure Fletcher now that he is our first choice.” He closed his memorandum by noting “Fletcher’s high business, management and technical qualifications would seem to be an ideal blend for a NASA Administrator.” It is not clear whether Richard Nixon saw the memorandum and told Haldeman he approved the choice of Fletcher, or whether Haldeman made the choice himself without bothering the president, something that happened on occasion with respect to issues of secondary interest to the president. At any rate, the initial in the “Approve” box on the Flanigan memo was Haldeman’s, not Nixon’s.3

The White House sent Fletcher’s nomination as NASA administrator to the Senate on February 27. Although easy Senate confirmation seemed likely, the nomination soon ran into trouble with the president. On March 9, vet­eran CBS correspondent Daniel Schorr on the evening’s nightly news pro­gram reported that Fletcher had advised President Nixon to take more time before endorsing a proposed antiballistic missile system called Safeguard. News anchor Walter Cronkite said that Schorr had gotten his information from overhearing a Fletcher conversation. Nixon was enraged by this report; his reaction was caught in his newly installed taping system. Meeting with Flanigan on the morning of March 10, which was the day of Fletcher’s Senate confirmation hearing, Nixon said “I am going to withdraw his nomination today unless that [the Schorr report] is denied.” Regarding Fletcher, Nixon said “I have never met the son of a bitch. I shook his hand once in my life. . . I am not going to have the new director of NASA, that good job, not meeting this flatly. . . We want him to say that he is in support of the ABM program. He has got to say that or I will withdraw his nomination this afternoon. I mean it, we are going to get tough around this place.” Nixon’s anger soon passed, and Fletcher’s nomination was not withdrawn.4