Post-Apollo Planning

On 8 January 1969, President-elect Richard Nixon received the “Report of the Task Force on Space,” a thirteen-member blue-ribbon panel charged with advis­ing the incoming president regarding options for the American space program. Chaired by Nobel Prize winner Charles Townes of the University of California at Berkeley, the task force issued a number of recommendations. The board favored a more balanced program that promoted expanded utilization of robotic probes and satellites for scientific research and exploration, and in a wide variety of applica­tions (e. g., communications, weather, and earth resource surveys). With regard to planetary exploration, the task force did not support the immediate adoption of a human spaceflight program based on a planetary lander or orbiter. Instead, the panel favored continued lunar exploration that built on Apollo technology to allow for greater mobility and extended stays on the surface.[47]

The following month, President Nixon asked Vice President Spiro Agnew to chair a Space Task Group (STG) created to provide a definitive recommendation regard­ing the course the space program should take during the post-Apollo period. The other members of the STG were Secretary of the Air Force Robert Seamans, NASA Administrator Thomas Paine, and Presidential Science Advisor Lee DuBridge. Joan Hoff argues in Spaceflight and the Myth of Presidential Leadership that the creation of the STG was “a mixed blessing for NASA because Paine assumed almost imme­diately that Agnews personal and public support of a ‘manned flight to Mars by the end of this century’ would carry the day inside the White House and BOB [Bureau of Budget], when nothing could have been further from the truth.”[48]'[49] At an early STG meeting, Paine pushed forward based on this incorrect assumption by con­tending that the space agency needed a new program to rally around. Agnew was supportive, stating that NASA needed an ‘Apollo for the seventies.”[50]

As the primary policy entrepreneurs supporting a human mission to Mars, Paine and Agnew selected an approach for post-Apollo planning that did not mesh with either President Nixon’s basic ideology or changes in the national mood regarding space exploration. Hoff writes “Nixon was concerned about scientific-technological programs that might stress engineering over science, competition over cooperation, civilian over military, and adventure over applications…[and his] emphasis on fru­gality in government spending prompted caution on his part in endorsing any effort in space.” Public sentiment toward the space program had also begun to shift, with increasing concerns that the government had misplaced priorities. A Gallup Poll conducted in July 1969, at the time of the Apollo 11 mission, indicated that only 39% of Americans were in favor of U. S. government spending to send Americans to Mars, while 53% were opposed.[51] Thus, Paine and Agnew were pushing for a large new Apollo-like commitment despite the fact that there appeared to be little or no support for such an undertaking within the White House or the mass public.[52]

On 16 July, at the launch of Apollo 11, Vice President Agnew told reporters that it was his “individual feeling that we should articulate a simple, ambitious, optimistic goal of a manned flight to Mars by the end of the century.” Up until this point, NASA had been focusing primarily on a large space station as the logical post-Apollo program. The space agency had been unsuccessful in gaining political support for such a program, however, so Administrator Paine decided that it was the appropriate time to make a human Mars mission the center of future planning. On 4 August, Wernher von Braun came to Washington to brief the STG on options for human exploration of Mars by 1982. After the briefing, Paine informed the panel that the mission could be accomplished if NASA’s budget was increased to $9 to $10 billion by the middle of the decade—at a time when the NASA budget was only $4.25 billion.[53] This seemed to be contrary to President Nixon’s fiscal philoso­phy as well as existing budgetary realities.

As it became clear that the STG was seriously considering an early Mars mission, widespread criticism of such an undertaking emerged. What was most troublesome for NASA was that formerly vigorous supporters of the space program were opposed to large new projects. Senator Clinton Anderson, Chairman of the Senate Com­mittee on Aeronautical and Space Sciences, stated “now is not the time to commit ourselves to the goal of a manned mission to Mars.” Representative George Miller, Chairman of the House Committee on Science and Astronautics, said “five, perhaps ten, years from now we may decide that it would be in the national interest to begin a carefully planned program extending over several years to send men to Mars.” The Washington Post and New York Times both questioned the validity of the enterprise, the latter stating that an early crewed Mars mission was scientifically and technically premature.[54]

In the face of growing opposition to a Mars project, Robert Seamans grew con­cerned that his colleagues were considering recommending a program that had no political support. Seamans, who had been a senior NASA official from I960 to 1968, argued that the space agency should utilize its capabilities to address “prob­lems directly affecting men here on Earth.” He contended that new human explora­tion initiatives should be deferred until their technical feasibility was determined. Budget Director Robert Mayo, who had observer status within the STG, agreed with this position. He believed that from a budgetary viewpoint an Apollo-like program was not practical in the near-term. Due to a lack of consensus regarding the exact direction that the post-Apollo program should travel, it was decided that the panel would present the White House with several future program alternatives. Presidential advisor John Erlichman demanded that the report not include any politically infeasible goals, such as a human mission to Mars by 1982.[55]

On 15 September 1969, the STG report was submitted to President Nixon. The panel recommended that “this Nation accept the basic goal of a balanced manned and unmanned space program conducted for the benefit of all mankind.” To accom­plish this goal, the report stressed five program objectives, including:

• Expansion of space applications

• Enhancement of space technology for national security purposes

• Continuation of earth and space science projects

• Development of a new space transportation capability and a space station

• Promotion of international cooperation in space

Finally, the group recommended that the nation “accept the long-range option or goal of manned planetary exploration with a manned Mars mission before the end of this century as the first target.” The STG report did not, however, support an immediate commitment to any particular future program or initiative. Instead, the panel provided President Nixon with several alternatives and left it to him to choose the best option.[56]

On 7 March 1970, six months after the STG report was submitted, President Nixon offered his first official comments on the future course of the space program. In his statement, the president declared that the space program would be less of a government priority during his administration. Nixon rejected the need for a bold new exploration initiative, arguing “many critical problems here on this planet make high priority demands on our attention and our resources. By no means should we allow our space program to stagnate. But—with the entire future and the entire universe before us—we should not try to do everything at once. Our approach to space must be bold—but it must also be balanced.”[57] This statement formally ended NASA’s attempts to get approval for a mission to Mars and led to the even­tual endorsement of the Space Shuttle program. Joan Hoff argues that there were four major reasons for the failure of NASA to gain approval for a bold post-Apollo initiative. First, President Nixon never “need[ed] to use the space program to prove himself able to deal with the Soviets, as Kennedy and Johnson apparently thought they did. NASA administrators and White House science advisors in 1969-72 failed

to appreciate this important shift____ ” Second, the Nixon administration inherited

economic problems generated by immense spending related to the Vietnam War and Great Society social programs. Third, an anti-technology mood within the American public forced policy makers to question whether large spending for the space program was a proper allocation of scarce government funding. As a result, the president decided that there was no political downside to supporting budget cuts for

NASA. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, Hoff contended that “institutional obstinacy at NASA when asked to comply with changing government budgeting methods and changing public expectations about the meaning of the space program” led to a deceleration within the space program.[58] John Logsdon agreed with this line of reasoning, writing in Exploring the Unknown: Organizing for Exploration, “…the results of NASA’s attempt to mobilize support behind the manned Mars objective were, from the Agency’s perspective, little short of disastrous…. What happened to NASA plans and the STG report is best viewed, not in terms of NASA winning’ or ‘losing,’ but in terms of what happens when an agency’s plans are significantly at variance with what political leaders judge to be both in the long-term interests of the nation and politically feasible.”[59] The fact that NASA pushed the Mars initiative despite substantial opposition resulted in discussion of sending humans to the red planet being a taboo subject within NASA for the next decade.