What to Do after Apollo?

By early 1968, James Webb had grudgingly come to accept the need for NASA to begin to plan for its future. He first commissioned an internal study led by one of NASA’s most senior people, director of NASA’s Langley Research Center Floyd Thompson, and involving other experienced NASA leaders. This “Post-Apollo Advisory Group” reported to Webb in July 1968 that “objectives for manned space flight in earth orbit for the period immedi­ately ahead must focus on deepening our understanding of man’s capabilities and needs in a weightless space environment for extended periods of time.” This advice led inexorably to identifying some form of orbital outpost—a space station—as the most appropriate post-Apollo program. A space station had been part of NASA’s planning even before the lunar landing program was begun, and there had been a number of NASA studies of space station concepts during the 1960s. To serve as the crew transportation vehicle for a space station, the group thought that initially the three-person Apollo command and service modules could be used but, as crew size increased and capabilities for a land landing and spacecraft reuse were developed, a modi­fied Gemini spacecraft launched by an expendable rocket was the appropriate choice to carry later crews to a space station.13

NASA’s Associate Administrator for Manned Space Flight George Mueller was not part of the Thompson study team. A hard-charging, bril­liant, tough-minded individual, Mueller since arriving at NASA in September 1963 had become almost autonomous in his management of NASA’s human space flight efforts. He had a different idea with respect to what should be NASA’s top post-Apollo priority. In an August 1968 speech to the British Interplanetary Society, he noted that “the exploitation of space is limited in concept and extent by the very high cost of putting payload in orbit, and the inaccessibility of objects once they have been launched.” This reality, said Mueller, led him to conclude that “the next major thrust in space will be the development of an economical launch vehicle for shuttling between Earth and the installations, such as the orbiting space station, which will soon be operating in space.” Mueller characterized such a vehicle as a “space shuttle.” Over the next three years, Mueller’s idea would become central to NASA’s plans for the future.14

Webb in early 1968 also selected Homer Newell, who had been involved in NASA’s space science activities since the agency’s inception and who at the time headed NASA’s Office of Space Science and Applications, to be the NASA associate administrator, the agency’s number three position. Newell’s primary responsibility was to design and manage what was characterized as an “experiment” in NASA-wide long range planning. Newell organized the planning effort in a very bureaucratic manner. There was little prog­ress during 1968 in achieving an integrated approach to NASA’s long-range plans. The results of the planning experiment, Newell admitted, “were not up to the standards of boldness and imagination expected. . . or worthy of our first decade in space.” NASA had become “so conditioned to retreat over the past two years that an intellectual conservatism pervaded the plan­ning. . . The total effect in terms of forward motion was pedestrian, even timid.” One major issue with respect to the planning experiment was the limited participation of Mueller’s Office of Manned Space Flight. As Newell commented, “the problem with manned space flight was that they were in the habit of going it alone, they wanted to go it alone, and they intended to go it alone.”15