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Battle for the space shuttle (8)
SHALL WE BUILD THE SPACE SHUTTLE?
Technology Review . October-November 1971.
John M. Logsdon
NASA is trying to win approval of the Shuttle program from the Nixon administration.
How does the issues at play in Washington affect the funding question ?
The only comparably-sized space program, Apollo, operated in an environment in which political and economic decisions were strikingly different from those affecting the Shuttle.
A key point was that presidential support for Apollo was omnipresent and cast an overarching shadow on all policy issues.
Such is not the case for the Shuttle; support for it is at best ambivalent and at some extremes perhaps contentious.
Worse, the political process, with officeholders constantly seeking popular support and reelection every 2, 4, or 6 years, means that they want payoffs in their programs within those time constraints.
The process is ill-suited to fostering long-term technological programs with results only coming in future decades.