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Battle for the space shuttle (5)
August 25, 1971
OMB deputy director Caspar Weinberger red again Nixon answer. Three weeks before, he had tentatively proposed the NASA administrator a FY73 budget well below $3 billion. There was no space shuttle, of course; it was way too expensive to fit into that budget envelope.
James Fletcher answer had been blunt.
Then manned spaceflight will die, since NASA has no option outside the Space Shuttle. Weinberger had not realized that; would his name be forever associated with the end of US manned spaceflight ?
Not that NASA expansive stunts really mattered to him; what mattered was the predictable loss of prestige against the Soviet Union that would inevitably follow closure of Apollo, Skylab and the shuttle.
He had thus changed his mind, and wrote to Nixon, defending a higher budget for NASA. “Present tentative plans call for major reductions or change in NASA, by eliminating the last two Apollo flights (16 and 17), and eliminating or sharply reducing the balance of the Manned Space Program (Skylab and Space Shuttle) and many remaining NASA programs. I believe this would be a mistake.
1) The real reason for sharp reductions in the NASA budget is that NASA is entirely in the 28% of the budget that is controllable. In short we cut it because it is cuttable, not because it is doing a bad job or an unnecessary one.
2) We are being driven, by the uncontrollable items, to spend more and more on programs that offer no real hope for the future: Model Cities, OEO, Welfare, interest on the National Debt, unemployment compensation, Medicare, etc. Of course, some of these have to be continued, in one form or another, but essentially they are programs, not of our choice, designed to repair mistakes of the past, not of our making.
3) We do need to reduce the budget, in my opinion, but we should not make all our reduction decisions on the basis of what is reducible, rather than on the merits of individual programs.
4) There is real merit to the future of NASA, and its proposed programs. The Space Shuttle and NERVA particularly offer the opportunity, among other things, to secure substantial scientific fall-out for the civilian economy at the same time that large numbers of valuable (and hard-to-employ-elsewhere) scientists and engineers are kept at work on projects that increase our knowledge of space, our ability to develop for lower cost space exploration, travel, and to secure, through NERVA, twice the existing propulsion efficiency for our rockets.
(…) Cancellation of Apollo 16 and Apollo 17 would have a very bad effect, coming so soon after Apollo 15's triumph. It would be confirming, in some respects, a belief that I fear is gaining credence at home and abroad: That our best years are behind us, that we are turning inward, reducing our defence commitments, and voluntarily starting to give up our super-power status, and our desire to maintain our world superiority. America should be able to afford something besides increased welfare, programs to repair our cities, or Appalachian relief and the like....
7) I believe I can find enough reductions in other programs to pay for continuing NASA at generally the $3.3 - $3.4 billion level I propose here. This figure is about $400 - $500 million more than the present planning targets.
The answer to his pledge was kind of a milestone. Weinberger's memo featured a handwritten annotation by the president. "I agree with Cap."
Manned spaceflight would not die with Skylab or Apollo. Astronauts would continue flying in space, in a ship that remained to be defined, probably a space shuttle - depending from the development costs, however.
The fight for the space shuttle has started Weinberger thought.
Powerful political forces were already moving; Mathematica and NASA faced Nixon Bureau of budget and Science Advisory Committee. The battle would be of epic proportions.