Fletcher Makes the White House Rounds

In his first month in office, Jim Fletcher made the rounds of White House people concerned with space issues, and found them skeptical about the prospects of approving the shuttle as NASA was then planning it. On May 4, the day after he arrived at NASA, Fletcher had lunch with Nixon assistant Peter Flanigan and science adviser Ed David. Fletcher reported to Low that with respect to the shuttle “Ed David took a rather negative view” and was “beginning to get cold feet about deciding to go ahead this fall.” David’s res­ervations included that he was “not yet convinced of the economic value” of the shuttle. His primary concern, however, was “political”; he feared that if “we hit Congress with something this large at this particular time, it might become another SST.” The Senate had canceled federal funding for that program in March 1971. David was also concerned, as were Fletcher and Low, about the large fraction of the NASA budget required for the shuttle program, “not leaving much room for [other] new programs along the way.” By contrast, “Peter Flanigan was not negative on the shuttle at all and was willing to be convinced.” Both David and Flanigan indicated that a NASA budget of $5 billion “was too large a peak for political salability.” David had heard rumors of the president’s interest in canceling both Apollo 16 and Apollo 17, and reminded Fletcher, referring to his intervention with the presi­dent the preceding December to avoid canceling Apollo 17, “that his name was signed in blood on this one” and that NASA “had better fight very hard for it since he had stuck his neck out so far.” David also suggested that “NASA ought to think seriously about alternatives to the shuttle.”29

David’s uncertainty about shuttle approval was also reflected in a brief memorandum regarding the shuttle he prepared at John Ehrlichman’s request in early May. Ehrlichman’s Domestic Council staff had identified the decision on whether to proceed with the shuttle as a major policy issue for 1971; Ehrlichman asked David to let him know “what has transpired and what the planning and time factor might be with regard to where we stand or plan for a decision on the shuttle.” After summarizing the current state of the program, David told Ehrlichman that “there is no commitment to devel­opment of the space shuttle system by the Administration, but it is clear that a decision will be required this fall if the shuttle is to proceed.” He added “personally, I am not yet in a position to support or to oppose the shuttle program. A great deal of important information remains to be assembled.” David also noted that “with the encouragement of OMB,” he was convening a “special panel” of the President’s Science Advisory Committee “to conduct a detailed review of the space shuttle program” and that “Dr. Fletcher, the new NASA Administrator, shares my desire to take a hard look at the pro­gram.”30

Fletcher also met with Bill Anders, executive secretary of the Space Council, who had been a confidential conduit to George Low of sensitive information regarding White House thinking on NASA issues. Anders was concerned with respect to filling the several-year gap in human space flights between the end of the Apollo and Skylab programs and initial space shuttle flights. Anders suggested to Fletcher that NASA could fill the gap by launch­ing four left-over Apollo spacecraft on Earth-orbiting missions.31