NASA and OMB Conflict Escalates

On December 12, George Low reported that “during the past two weeks we met with Don Rice, Tom Whitehead, Jonathan Rose, Ed David separately, and finally with Rice, David and Flanigan together, to discuss the kind of space shuttle that should be developed.” Low once again stated that “the basic issue on the space shuttle concerns whether or not the shuttle should capture a majority of the payloads that will be flown in the 1980’s.”14

White House Support

NASA’s efforts to gain support for its shuttle concept seemed to be paying off, at least in the view of Tom Whitehead. Whitehead wrote Flanigan on December 2, noting that he and Flanigan “had succeeded when we first came into office in averting NASA’s high flying plans for space stations and Mars trips, and in bringing the budget down to a more realistic level con­sistent with the President’s wishes.” But, added Whitehead, it had not been their intention “to continue to erode NASA’s budget indefinitely, but to induce them to come up with a sound, forward-looking evolutionary space program for the coming decade.” Whitehead observed that “over the last few months, OMB and NASA have been bickering, principally about the space shuttle.” He thought that Fletcher had “done what I believe to be an outstanding job of devising a space shuttle concept that is consistent with reasonable budget levels and sensible technology, and still builds for the future.” Whitehead was aware of the alternative shuttle concepts then under discussion, and tended “to believe that the larger shuttle is the more prudent course, but the differences are so small that the choice should reasonably be left to NASA’s discretion.” He suspected that “OMB will try to push fairly hard for the smaller version. NASA might buy this as a last choice, but the impact on their morale and that of the aerospace industry would be unneces­sarily negative.”15

Attached to Whitehead’s memorandum was a chart prepared by Bill Anders that summarized on one page the various shuttle alternatives that had been examined in the preceding months. Anders characterized the fully reusable shuttle that had been NASA’s original hope as “Fat Albert” and the small glider that had been proposed during the Flax committee deliberations as “Weird Harold.” The chart compared the then-current NASA and OMB shuttle configurations, noting that there were “relatively small (15-20%) payload differences and with reasonably broad consensus that we are talking about the right animal now, there would seem to be little further gain by delaying publicized commitment.”16