Reagan-Bush Transition

After his election, President-elect Bush set upon the task of selecting a White House staff and appointing a cabinet. During the campaign, President Reagan took extraordinary measures to ease the new presidents transition into office. This was the first time in six decades that a president of one party was succeeded through election by a president of the same party. James Pfiffner argues in Presidential Transi­tions: The Reagan to Bush Experience, “The fact that the transition to a Bush admin­istration was a ‘friendly takeover’ [meant] there was no rush, as there would be with any party-turnover transition, to ensure that the opposition political party was out of office as soon as possible.”11 In retrospect, this proved to be a mixed blessing for the White House when it came to appointing a new NASA administrator. Changing the space agency’s political leadership was not a top priority for the Bush transition team. Administrator Fletcher had returned to the space program in the aftermath of the Challenger accident to get NASA back on its feet. While it was assumed that he would choose to return to the private sector, there was no perceived hurry in find­ing his replacement. In coming years, this relatively laid-back approach to naming a new administrator would come back to haunt the White House.

In December 1988, President-elect Bush received a report from the National Academy of Sciences and National Academy of Engineering (NAS/NAE) that pro­vided recommendations for determining the proper role for the civil space program with respect to other claims on federal resources. The NAS/NAE team, chaired

by H. Guyford Stever, decided that the most important policy question that Bush needed to address after taking office regarded the future of the space station pro­gram. The study found that “a permanently manned space station is needed to maintain a viable manned spaceflight capability for the United States. However, its primary justification is to establish the feasibility of human exploration beyond Earth’s orbit.” Thus, the report argued that final decisions regarding the pace of station development and its final configuration should be made in the context of long-term goals for the space program. The report contended that attaining space leadership required a civil space program with two structural components. First, NASA must have a base competency in all forms of space activities to ensure the fea­sibility of a wide-range of large initiative alternatives. These fundamental capabili­ties included: assured access to space; a respectable space science and Earth remote sensing program; and sufficient funding for advanced technology development. The report estimated that this foundational element would cost $10 billion per year. Second, NASA should adopt a long-term strategy for major human spaceflight initiatives serving scientific, political, cultural, and foreign policy objectives. The report argued that these projects should be funded separately from the base pro­gram, primarily to avoid the erosion of crucial capabilities. Potential initiatives that the study team identified were: the space station; a permanent return to the moon; and a human mission to Mars. The report approximated the annual expenditure for these endeavors at between $3 and $4 billion. The NAS/NAE team also suggested that President-elect Bush should take advantage of opportunities offered by coop­erative endeavors with other space faring nations, which would provide costs savings and political, scientific, and technical benefits.[96] Although this approach seemed to match the budgetary realities facing the space program, it was not seriously consid­ered by the incoming administration or NASA.

During the transition period, a four-person team was established within NASA and tasked with studying open issues facing the civil space program. Led by Brad Mitchell, the team spent the two months before the Bush inauguration prepar­ing a report for whoever would eventually replace Fletcher.[97] In mid-January, the NASA Transition Office Contact Team submitted its briefing report for the NASA Administrator-Designate, who was expected to be appointed sometime in the late spring. The transition team concluded that the space agency’s strategic planning must be carried out, taking into account the Administration’s concerns about the budget deficit. Therefore, it found that an efficient priority-setting mechanism was needed to achieve the most value for NASA’s budgeted dollars.[98] The briefing report further outlined the major space programs and themes that President Bush spoke about during the campaign. The transition team argued that one of the most impor­tant tasks for the new administrator would be to assist the President in prioritizing these programs. The study separated the various space issues into seven categories: policy formulation; exploration and scientific research; aeronautics and technology development; commercial initiatives; international cooperation; national security; and science and mathematics education. With regard to policy formulation, one of the first tasks for the new administration would be the creation of a National Space Council chaired by Vice President Dan Quayle—Congress had mandated this the previous year.[99] The primary duty of this organization would be to “set ambitious goals for a space comeback and re-establish U. S. preeminence in space.” With rela­tion to human exploration, the study made clear that the primary near-term objec­tive was to develop an operational space station by 1996. While the report men­tioned the Reagan administration’s space policy that called for human exploration beyond Earth orbit, it did not specifically suggest whether the Bush administration should make that same commitment. Instead, the transition team discussed pro­grams that would lay the foundation for such undertakings, including: development of an aerospace plane; advancement of pathfinder technologies; and construction of heavy-lift launch vehicles.[100] Beyond setting out the Bush administrations basic ideas about the space program, the hastily prepared Mitchell Report added little to the ongoing debate regarding human exploration beyond Earth orbit. The contact team itself implied that the next NASA Administrator and President Bush should make strategic policy decisions based on more authoritative studies like the Ride Report and Beyond Earth’s Boundaries. Therefore, as the new Bush administration came to power, it was still unclear what direction it would take with regard to future human exploration of the Moon and Mars.