alternatehistory.com
Battle for the space shuttle (17)
things are going downhill pretty fast... 
Washington DC.
December 28, 1971
In the end it had been Caspar Weinberger, who was not present at the earlier, tense11 December meeting, that attempted to stop Fletcher.
George Low, puzzled, listened the heated phone conversation between the two men.
Weinberger evidently tried to reason Fletcher; but it was obvious at the same time that he wouldn't change his mind - he was fixed on his October 22 point of view. For half an hour the heated phone conversation continued over and again, with Fletcher and Weinberger arguing bitterly.
Finally a visibly pissed-off Weinberger said
“The President wants NASA to look at a manned capsule, period. You have to bit the bullet, and hang on." Weinberger insisted one more time.
And then, unexpectedly and to Low surprise, the usually polite James Fletcher went out of control.
“Go to hell !” he shouted. He hanged up the phone and furiously threw the document entitled Logistic spacecraft system evolving from Gemini on his desk.
“Look at the future of NASA. Enlarged Geminis. Apollo hardware. Expendable boosters. Thanks bastard Weinberger for that !” he shouted.
“What do we do next?” the NASA deputy administrator asked, puzzled.
Fletcher stared outside for a long moment. When he finally turned toward Low, his voice was as cold as the Washington winter.
“What can you do, George… I’m retiring. I don’t think I can politically survive this mess. I did my best to obtain the shuttle, and failed.
We will have to wait for years, maybe decades, before lowering the cost of transportation to orbit.”
Fletcher voice was all regrets. “And you’ll be my successor.”
“As the acting administrator, of course.” Low was uncertain of what to say.
“Oh, it’s much more than that. To get out this shuttle mess we need a person with a strong technical background, a person who'd exercised technical judgement over many years in a wide variety of areas.
I spoke to Thomas Paine some days ago, and he explained me the exact reasons why two years ago he made you his deputy administrator. And he convinced me you’re the right man to succeed myself.
I mean, not as acting administrator. So good luck George. You already handled NASA for a short period. You’re the right man for this agency. Do you best with what those fucking bureaucrats give you.”
“Thank you.” Low had difficulties believing what he had heard. "But I can't accept. I won't be the next NASA administrator. What you don't know is, before they chose you last February, I was among the list of contenders. And I refused. Yes, I refused to be the administrator a year ago, and my opinion has not changed to this day."
"But you've been a competent deputy administrator, and did an honest transition. The agency you handle me was quite in a good shape." Fletcher said. But Low just shook his head negatively.
"All I did was to immerse myself fully in day-by-day work. As an interim caretaker administrator, I did not wish to preempt my successor as administrator, since Nixon was expected to nominate a new administrator almost any time. Besides, campaigning for a space project, talking to members of the government and to the public, establishing personal contacts with congressional committees, and interacting on a personal basis with those who felt responsible for this nation space program, are definitively not my cup of tea.
To put it more bluntly: above all I'm an engineer and manager; I'm not good dealing with all the political garbage."
"So you refused."
"So I refused. I'm ready for yet another interim, if possible shorter, and to remain the deputy administrator after that."
He shaked Fletcher hand.
“We have to move forward. I don’t think any capsule will create as much jobs as the shuttle would have had…”
“It won’t. Even Big Gemini – I hopes you realize the name is a sale gimmick from Douglas – will break no ground in technology. It will be ready faster and cheaper than the shuttle would have, probably around 1977.
You’ll have to find another program in the medium term. Whatever happen, Marshall and North American will take a severe hit.”
“Without shuttle, emphasis will inevitably switch to a space station." Low stated. "That’s the only Space Task Group option we can reasonably hope for in the next future, now that Mars and the Moon are out of question and NERVA postponed sine die. Nixon needs to preserve jobs in California aerospace industry, that's why he mentioned a space station, a follow-on to Skylab."
"So you give up, George ? Won't you fight more for the shuttle ?" Fletcher sighed.
"It's not against you, James. Look, we can't change the presidential decision. I had doubts over the shuttle future since the day the OMB capped our budget to $3.2 billion per year for the next future and forced us to the one-billion-per-year shuttle. In my opinion the Glider, the "fat Dynasoar", was our fallback option if things went wrong with the OMB - and they did.
We failed when did not considered that fallback option seriously. We were left with nothing but Big Gemini or perhaps a block III Apollo - a manned capsule.
“I see. And the fucking military were sceptical on the shuttle since the beginning. Don’t expect any help from them” Fletcher was all rage.“The other day I discussed the Shuttle with the Director of defence Research and Engineering (DDR&E) - John Foster. Did you know what his opinion is ?”
“No”
“Well, Foster insists that the Shuttle had to be built along with a place to go: a space station. You have an ally there !” Fletcher said dryly.
“Well James, as much as I love the shuttle, the best we can do would be a mixed fleet – a 10 000 pounds-payload shuttle with Titan for heavier payloads.”
“That won’t work. Mathematica told us the shuttle needs 60 flights per year or burst. To achieve the flight rate we have to get ride of every expendable outside Scout – not only Titan, but also Atlas and Delta and Saturn."
Fletcher shook his head in disbelief.
"Now just consider this fact. If we go with Big Gemini, it will be the first time in the history of manned spaceflight that there won’t be a bidding contest. Be ready to face major opposition, notably from North American and many other contractors: Lockheed has the Corona, Northrop a couple of lifting body shapes. Martin Marietta will certainly want to complete the Titan with its own lifting body, a X-24 derivative. Boeing and Grumman have nothing yet, but scaled-down shuttles may be attractive, too, with all the work already done on the orbiter.”
“And DynaSoar.” Low added.
The two men felt silent. George Low knew that he would have to assume NASA leadership again – albeit he was not sure how long his stint would last this time. Finding a successor to James Chipman Fletcher might be a rude task for those concerned.
After the visibly broken Fletcher left George Low eye was caught by one of the documents on the desk next to him.
It was a tentative list of names supposedly better than the bland "space shuttle" moniker.
Earlier piloted spacecraft had carried names such as Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo, but they were unsure whether the new one would break with this practice or not. Low reminded that himself, Fletcher and Willy Shapley had prepared a list that included Pegasus, Hermes, Astroplane, and Skylark.
Flanigan had passed this list to White House staffers, who picked the name Space Clipper, which resembled Lockheed's Star-Clipper, the very concept Mueller had pitched to the British Interplanetary Society that day of August 1968, starting the space shuttle enchilada.
And now the list stood there, perfectly unuseful. A broken dream, the symbol of a spaceship that would never be.
There was another document on the desk, another broken promise.
It was a memo concerned with potential space shuttle launch sites - outside of Cape Kennedy and Vandenberg AFB, California.
The Space Shuttle Launch and Recovery Site Review Board, as it was known, had been chaired by Floyd Thompson, a former director of NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia.
The Board got its start on 26 April 1971, when Dale Myers, NASA Associate Administrator for Manned Space Flight, charged it with determining whether any of the candidate sites could host a single new Shuttle launch and landing site as versatile as KSC and VAFB were together. The consolidation scheme aimed to trim Shuttle cost by eliminating redundancy.
The board had reviewed no less than 150 candidate Shuttle launch and landing sites in 40 of the fifty U.S. states !
A few were NASA-selected candidates, but most were put forward by members of Congress, state and local politicians, and even private individuals.
The proposed Space Shuttle launch and landing sites were a motley mix. Many were Defense Department air bases of various types (for example, Patuxent Naval Air Station, Maryland), while a few were city airports (for example, the Lincoln, Nebraska Municipal Airport).
Texas proposed two sites at the Big Bend of the Rio Grande River and Wyoming offered 11 of its 23 counties.
KSC and VAFB were on the list, as were NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, and Ellington Air Force Base in Houston, Texas, which had as its chief function to serve NASA’s Manned Spacecraft Center.
In its efforts to cull unsuitable sites, the Thompson Board focused most of its attention on the effects of sonic booms. Based on this and other criteria, the Thompson Board had recently trimmed the list of candidate single Space Shuttle launch and landing sites to just seven.
These were: KSC; VAFB; Edwards Air Force Base, California; Las Vegas, Nevada; Matagorda Island, Texas; Michael Army Air Field/Dugway Proving Ground, Utah; and Mountain Home Air Force Base, Idaho.
Before Weinberger cancelled the shuttle mid-October, many uncertainities remained with the booster, however - not only was it no longer reusable, it was also unpiloted or even unguided.
Pinpoint landings would be accordingly difficult, restricting the launch sites to desertic areas. Worse, some booster concepts could not even hard land - they would have to splashdown in the Atlantic, eliminating all non-coastal launch sites.
In the end the only site beside Kennedy and Vandenberg that presented all the booster safety requirements was Matagorda Island, Texas.
The Thompson Board then compared the cost of building and operating a single new Space Shuttle launch and landing facility at Matagorda Island, 65 miles south of Houston, Texas, with the cost of modifying and operating both KSC and VAFB.
It was impossible to launch in polar orbit from the Cape, for the simple reason that any launch north of 62 degree overfly populated areas.
Hence the need for Vandenberg. Matagorda had no such limitations. Matagorda Island however had no spaceflight infrastructure already in place - in fact it has no infrastructure at all !
Roads, railways, an electric grid, a harbor, an airport, waste treatment plants, and a water system would all need to be built new or expanded. Thousands of workers would need to relocate to the area in less than five years, placing enormous strain on local housing, schools, and what few amenities existed in the immediate area. At the same time, the communities around KSC, already under pressure as the Apollo Program drew to an end, would suffer catastrophic job losses. Needless to say, the Matagorda plan was found to be unacceptable !
Washington DC.
December 28, 1971
In the end it had been Caspar Weinberger, who was not present at the earlier, tense11 December meeting, that attempted to stop Fletcher.
George Low, puzzled, listened the heated phone conversation between the two men.
Weinberger evidently tried to reason Fletcher; but it was obvious at the same time that he wouldn't change his mind - he was fixed on his October 22 point of view. For half an hour the heated phone conversation continued over and again, with Fletcher and Weinberger arguing bitterly.
Finally a visibly pissed-off Weinberger said
“The President wants NASA to look at a manned capsule, period. You have to bit the bullet, and hang on." Weinberger insisted one more time.
And then, unexpectedly and to Low surprise, the usually polite James Fletcher went out of control.
“Go to hell !” he shouted. He hanged up the phone and furiously threw the document entitled Logistic spacecraft system evolving from Gemini on his desk.
“Look at the future of NASA. Enlarged Geminis. Apollo hardware. Expendable boosters. Thanks bastard Weinberger for that !” he shouted.
“What do we do next?” the NASA deputy administrator asked, puzzled.
Fletcher stared outside for a long moment. When he finally turned toward Low, his voice was as cold as the Washington winter.
“What can you do, George… I’m retiring. I don’t think I can politically survive this mess. I did my best to obtain the shuttle, and failed.
We will have to wait for years, maybe decades, before lowering the cost of transportation to orbit.”
Fletcher voice was all regrets. “And you’ll be my successor.”
“As the acting administrator, of course.” Low was uncertain of what to say.
“Oh, it’s much more than that. To get out this shuttle mess we need a person with a strong technical background, a person who'd exercised technical judgement over many years in a wide variety of areas.
I spoke to Thomas Paine some days ago, and he explained me the exact reasons why two years ago he made you his deputy administrator. And he convinced me you’re the right man to succeed myself.
I mean, not as acting administrator. So good luck George. You already handled NASA for a short period. You’re the right man for this agency. Do you best with what those fucking bureaucrats give you.”
“Thank you.” Low had difficulties believing what he had heard. "But I can't accept. I won't be the next NASA administrator. What you don't know is, before they chose you last February, I was among the list of contenders. And I refused. Yes, I refused to be the administrator a year ago, and my opinion has not changed to this day."
"But you've been a competent deputy administrator, and did an honest transition. The agency you handle me was quite in a good shape." Fletcher said. But Low just shook his head negatively.
"All I did was to immerse myself fully in day-by-day work. As an interim caretaker administrator, I did not wish to preempt my successor as administrator, since Nixon was expected to nominate a new administrator almost any time. Besides, campaigning for a space project, talking to members of the government and to the public, establishing personal contacts with congressional committees, and interacting on a personal basis with those who felt responsible for this nation space program, are definitively not my cup of tea.
To put it more bluntly: above all I'm an engineer and manager; I'm not good dealing with all the political garbage."
"So you refused."
"So I refused. I'm ready for yet another interim, if possible shorter, and to remain the deputy administrator after that."
He shaked Fletcher hand.
“We have to move forward. I don’t think any capsule will create as much jobs as the shuttle would have had…”
“It won’t. Even Big Gemini – I hopes you realize the name is a sale gimmick from Douglas – will break no ground in technology. It will be ready faster and cheaper than the shuttle would have, probably around 1977.
You’ll have to find another program in the medium term. Whatever happen, Marshall and North American will take a severe hit.”
“Without shuttle, emphasis will inevitably switch to a space station." Low stated. "That’s the only Space Task Group option we can reasonably hope for in the next future, now that Mars and the Moon are out of question and NERVA postponed sine die. Nixon needs to preserve jobs in California aerospace industry, that's why he mentioned a space station, a follow-on to Skylab."
"So you give up, George ? Won't you fight more for the shuttle ?" Fletcher sighed.
"It's not against you, James. Look, we can't change the presidential decision. I had doubts over the shuttle future since the day the OMB capped our budget to $3.2 billion per year for the next future and forced us to the one-billion-per-year shuttle. In my opinion the Glider, the "fat Dynasoar", was our fallback option if things went wrong with the OMB - and they did.
We failed when did not considered that fallback option seriously. We were left with nothing but Big Gemini or perhaps a block III Apollo - a manned capsule.
“I see. And the fucking military were sceptical on the shuttle since the beginning. Don’t expect any help from them” Fletcher was all rage.“The other day I discussed the Shuttle with the Director of defence Research and Engineering (DDR&E) - John Foster. Did you know what his opinion is ?”
“No”
“Well, Foster insists that the Shuttle had to be built along with a place to go: a space station. You have an ally there !” Fletcher said dryly.
“Well James, as much as I love the shuttle, the best we can do would be a mixed fleet – a 10 000 pounds-payload shuttle with Titan for heavier payloads.”
“That won’t work. Mathematica told us the shuttle needs 60 flights per year or burst. To achieve the flight rate we have to get ride of every expendable outside Scout – not only Titan, but also Atlas and Delta and Saturn."
Fletcher shook his head in disbelief.
"Now just consider this fact. If we go with Big Gemini, it will be the first time in the history of manned spaceflight that there won’t be a bidding contest. Be ready to face major opposition, notably from North American and many other contractors: Lockheed has the Corona, Northrop a couple of lifting body shapes. Martin Marietta will certainly want to complete the Titan with its own lifting body, a X-24 derivative. Boeing and Grumman have nothing yet, but scaled-down shuttles may be attractive, too, with all the work already done on the orbiter.”
“And DynaSoar.” Low added.
The two men felt silent. George Low knew that he would have to assume NASA leadership again – albeit he was not sure how long his stint would last this time. Finding a successor to James Chipman Fletcher might be a rude task for those concerned.
After the visibly broken Fletcher left George Low eye was caught by one of the documents on the desk next to him.
It was a tentative list of names supposedly better than the bland "space shuttle" moniker.
Earlier piloted spacecraft had carried names such as Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo, but they were unsure whether the new one would break with this practice or not. Low reminded that himself, Fletcher and Willy Shapley had prepared a list that included Pegasus, Hermes, Astroplane, and Skylark.
Flanigan had passed this list to White House staffers, who picked the name Space Clipper, which resembled Lockheed's Star-Clipper, the very concept Mueller had pitched to the British Interplanetary Society that day of August 1968, starting the space shuttle enchilada.
And now the list stood there, perfectly unuseful. A broken dream, the symbol of a spaceship that would never be.
There was another document on the desk, another broken promise.
It was a memo concerned with potential space shuttle launch sites - outside of Cape Kennedy and Vandenberg AFB, California.
The Space Shuttle Launch and Recovery Site Review Board, as it was known, had been chaired by Floyd Thompson, a former director of NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia.
The Board got its start on 26 April 1971, when Dale Myers, NASA Associate Administrator for Manned Space Flight, charged it with determining whether any of the candidate sites could host a single new Shuttle launch and landing site as versatile as KSC and VAFB were together. The consolidation scheme aimed to trim Shuttle cost by eliminating redundancy.
The board had reviewed no less than 150 candidate Shuttle launch and landing sites in 40 of the fifty U.S. states !
A few were NASA-selected candidates, but most were put forward by members of Congress, state and local politicians, and even private individuals.
The proposed Space Shuttle launch and landing sites were a motley mix. Many were Defense Department air bases of various types (for example, Patuxent Naval Air Station, Maryland), while a few were city airports (for example, the Lincoln, Nebraska Municipal Airport).
Texas proposed two sites at the Big Bend of the Rio Grande River and Wyoming offered 11 of its 23 counties.
KSC and VAFB were on the list, as were NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, and Ellington Air Force Base in Houston, Texas, which had as its chief function to serve NASA’s Manned Spacecraft Center.
In its efforts to cull unsuitable sites, the Thompson Board focused most of its attention on the effects of sonic booms. Based on this and other criteria, the Thompson Board had recently trimmed the list of candidate single Space Shuttle launch and landing sites to just seven.
These were: KSC; VAFB; Edwards Air Force Base, California; Las Vegas, Nevada; Matagorda Island, Texas; Michael Army Air Field/Dugway Proving Ground, Utah; and Mountain Home Air Force Base, Idaho.
Before Weinberger cancelled the shuttle mid-October, many uncertainities remained with the booster, however - not only was it no longer reusable, it was also unpiloted or even unguided.
Pinpoint landings would be accordingly difficult, restricting the launch sites to desertic areas. Worse, some booster concepts could not even hard land - they would have to splashdown in the Atlantic, eliminating all non-coastal launch sites.
In the end the only site beside Kennedy and Vandenberg that presented all the booster safety requirements was Matagorda Island, Texas.
The Thompson Board then compared the cost of building and operating a single new Space Shuttle launch and landing facility at Matagorda Island, 65 miles south of Houston, Texas, with the cost of modifying and operating both KSC and VAFB.
It was impossible to launch in polar orbit from the Cape, for the simple reason that any launch north of 62 degree overfly populated areas.
Hence the need for Vandenberg. Matagorda had no such limitations. Matagorda Island however had no spaceflight infrastructure already in place - in fact it has no infrastructure at all !
Roads, railways, an electric grid, a harbor, an airport, waste treatment plants, and a water system would all need to be built new or expanded. Thousands of workers would need to relocate to the area in less than five years, placing enormous strain on local housing, schools, and what few amenities existed in the immediate area. At the same time, the communities around KSC, already under pressure as the Apollo Program drew to an end, would suffer catastrophic job losses. Needless to say, the Matagorda plan was found to be unacceptable !
- Archibald
- Word Count: 1.9k