Significance of the Shuttle Decision

As Mariner 9 brought enthusiasm to NASA’s space science program, Fletcher was about to obtain what Webb and Paine could not: a post-Apollo human program that would end the steady decline in budget and sustain the agency for the long haul—and make a big science effort like Viking possible. It had been a struggle. OMB staff in the summer of 1971 had proposed to reduce NASA’s budget below $3 billion, denying it the Space Shuttle, further eliminating spe­cific Moon flights, and making cuts in a host of other programs. Viking certainly would have been affected adversely.

On August 12, 1971, however, Caspar (Cap) Weinberger, deputy director of OMB, wrote Nixon that the cuts were going too far. He pointed out that “there is real merit to the future of NASA, and to its proposed programs.” To keep cutting NASA would give comfort to those “at home and abroad” who say “our best years are behind us, that we are turning inward. . . and voluntarily starting to give up our super-power status, and our desire to maintain world superiority.” The United States, he argued, should “be able to afford something besides increased welfare, programs to repair our cities, or Appalachian relief and the like.”47

Nixon wrote a note on Weinberger’s memo: “I agree with Cap.” Subsequently, George Shultz, now the budget director, was informed that “the president ap­proved Mr. Weinberger’s plan to find enough reductions in other programs to pay for continuing NASA at generally the 3.3-3.4 billion dollar level, or about 400 to 500 million dollars more than the present planning target.”48

Fletcher did not know about the exchange, nor did OMB staff, and they continued to fight the remainder of the year, with Fletcher forced more and more to couch the shuttle’s rationale in cost-benefit terms, striking deals with the Department of Defense as a shuttle user, and making various technical com­promises to save money. But by the end of the year, it was clear that NASA was being “stabilized” in line with the Weinberger-Nixon-Shultz exchange. On January 5, 1972, Fletcher and Low flew to meet Nixon at his western White House in San Clemente, California. There, Nixon told them that “space flight is here to stay” and publicly announced that NASA was going to develop a reusable space shuttle. This was a multibillion-dollar, long-term commitment.49

Without question, this decision saved human spaceflight, and possibly NASA as an independent agency. The shuttle decision was “the central space choice of the 1970s.” It meant that for the remainder of the decade “the United States would carry out those space missions that could be afforded within a fixed NASA budget after Shuttle development costs had been paid.”50 While essen­tial to NASA, the shuttle decision was a mixed blessing. It secured a measure of agency stability overall, but it constrained all other programs. Also, the shuttle provided services to low-Earth orbit. It was not about exploration of deep space. The exploration missions now became the sole prerogative of the robotic sci­ence program.

The Viking project in particular emerged as the de facto flagship for NASA’s exploration effort in the first half of the 1970s. To be sure, there were other mis­sions to the planets in effect or on the drawing board. But Viking stood out in this period as an exploration priority in scale and purpose. Viking was exciting to scientists and also a magnet for the media and public because of its search for life. Thanks to Mariner 9, there was a new anticipation for the quest. And thanks to the shuttle decision, NASA had a fighting chance to get the resources to make it possible.