First Steps

The FY1971 budget process had actually started six months earlier, when BOB Director Mayo on April 4 had indicated to NASA areas of particular interest to BOB with respect to upcoming budget decisions. These included

• “Should the U. S. undertake the development of a long duration manned orbital space station in the FY1971-73 period?”

• “Should a grand tour mission to the outer planets be undertaken in the next decade?”[4]

On May 23, Mayo added to these two areas for intensive study the issue of the Apollo launch rate—whether there should be one, two, or three launches to the Moon a year after the first successful lunar landing. The question of Apollo launch rate was of particular interest to a young analyst in BOB’s Office of Program Evaluation, Richard Speier; that office carried out special studies for BOB in support of its budgeting function. Speier was arguing within BOB that by limiting Apollo launches to one per year and by not only cancelling future production of the Saturn V launcher but also halting manufacture of the last two already approved Saturn Vs, there could be a budget savings of $1 billion in FY1971.10

During summer 1969, the budget process moved forward in its normal rhythm, independent of the activities of the STG. Mayo in a July 28 letter to Tom Paine gave NASA two budget targets for FY1971. One, the “official target,” was the maximum amount that would be available for NASA under the current fiscal outlook. This figure was $3.5 billion. In addition, NASA was told that in planning its future activities it should assume budgets of $3.5 billion per year for the next eight years, the anticipated tenure of the Nixon administration. This could hardly have been a welcome message for NASA, given that the agency at the same time was preparing to brief the STG on an ambitious program leading to an early Mars mission and requir­ing substantial budget increases in coming years.

NASA was also given an alternative target of $4.6 billion, with budget levels rising to $6 billion in subsequent years. This target was provided “as a means of indicating priorities at a higher resources level, in case subsequent events enable changes in current plans.” The large difference in the two tar­get figures was not all that unusual in the early stages of the budget process, since they bracketed what the BOB staff thought at the time was the most likely outcome, a NASA budget in the $3.7-$4.0 billion range.11

Even as the STG was finalizing its report, NASA budget examiners within BOB were preparing a lengthy critique of the report and an analysis of pos­sible NASA programs at four different budget levels, ranging from one pro­gram at $1.5 billion/year, two options at $2.5 billion/year, and one at $3.5 billon/year. The BOB staff characterized the draft STG report as “inad­equate as a basis for Presidential decision,” noting that the report assumed “a Presidential posture favoring rapid deployment of new manned space flight systems,” but that “the combination of Defense and domestic budget com­mitments with concomitant budget demands for the next 2 to 4 years may make such a space posture untenable.” The staff paper suggested that “the crucial problem with manned space flight is that no one is really prepared to stop manned space flight activity, and yet no defined manned project can compete on a cost-return basis with unmanned space flight systems. In addi­tion, missions that are designed around man’s unique capabilities appear to have little demonstrable economic or social return to atone for their high costs. Their principle [sic] contribution is that each manned flight paves the way for more manned flight.”12