Defining the STG Options

At the conclusion of the August 4 meeting, NASA was given the assignment of defining the programmatic content of these three options. This was the role that the agency had sought from the very beginning of the STG pro­cess, when Tom Paine had argued vigorously against the proposal that space program options should be defined by DuBridge and his external advisory panel. NASA took full advantage of this assignment, and by mid-August submitted to the Staff Directors Committee three options, each of which included the same hardware elements, derived from Mueller’s integrated plan, and each of which included human missions to Mars; the difference among the plans was in their schedules and annual budget requirements, not in their content. Each included simultaneous development of the two new systems that were NASA’s top priority objectives for the next few years—a large space station and a space shuttle. Although at the August 4 meeting the STG principals had suggested that NASA prepare a $4 billion/year “aus­tere” option that included a continuing human space flight effort, NASA argued that such an option was not feasible, and thus refused to provide it. The NASA options were:

• Program A, described as “maximum progress technically feasible,” and “comparable to the 1961 decision to go to the moon.” This was essentially the program that had been presented to the STG on August 4;

• Program B, described as “maximum returns from an economical pro­gram”; and

• Program C, described as “minimum consistent with continuing techno­logical advance.”39

It was clear from the way that NASA presented its options that Program B was its preferred choice; if adopted that option would commit the Nixon administration during its second term to NASA budgets greater than those at the peak of the Apollo effort.