The Threat of Withdrawn Support

Paine accepted Seamans’s suggestion, which came close to being a demand, given the perceived importance of national security community support if the shuttle program were to move forward. A charter for a NASA/Air Force STS Committee was signed on February 17, 1970. The committee, “in order that the STS be designed and developed to fulfill the objectives of both the NASA and the DOD in a manner that best serves the national interest,” was to conduct a “continuing review” of the STS program and make recom­mendations “on the establishment and assessment of program objectives, operational applications, and development plans.” The agreement noted that the shuttle program “may involve international participation and use” and would be “generally unclassified.” The agreement stated definitively that shuttle development “will be managed by NASA.”27

The committee met six times during 1970, four times in 1971, and once in early 1972. The NASA/Air Force STS Committee turned out to be pri­marily a forum for the national security community to keep pressure on NASA to propose a shuttle design that met the community’s requirements. There was throughout those two years the not-so-veiled threat to withdraw DOD support for the shuttle if NASA did not do so. NASA reflected that pressure in the requirements it established for its continuing shuttle design studies. As the shuttle entered the decisive 1971 year, NASA was proposing a shuttle that would meet all national security requirements, and continued until the final days of 1971 to insist that only such a “full capability” shuttle was worth developing. This position eventually prevailed. The national secu­rity requirements established in 1969 thus had a pervasive impact on the final design of the space shuttle.