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1972: NASA hell of a year (2)
dawn of a new era
January 24, 1972
George Low rapidly rattled through the pile of notes and technical memorandums that had landed on his desk. He worked his way rapidly through the documents, analytic. And what the notes were telling him, the conclusions he made, smelled bad.
The situation was overly complicated.
NASA had too much large projects on its plate. Competing were the space shuttle, the space station with a crew capsule and the NERVA nuclear rocket, all for manned flight; unmanned spaceflight was no better, with Viking, that Grand Tour, and a new start: the Large Space Telescope.
Six large projects ? Hell no. The shuttle's already dead. First casualty, and it might not be the last.
Viking was essentially safe, although it had been pushed back by two years, to 1975. Serious difficulties and cost overruns plagued, not the entire program, rather a part of it: the life seeking package. They would probably have to cancel one out of five experiments, infuriating many scientists in the process…
The Large Telescope was only beginning, so it was not a problem yet.
The real competition opposed a large unmanned project, the Grand Tour, to the manned spaceflight next big thing - be it the shuttle or a more balanced combination of Space Station and manned capsule.
The Grand Tour consisted of four bleeding-edge technology probes to be send across the outer solar system, from Jupiter to Pluto.
And, to complicate matters further, a third large project came on the heels of Grand tour and manned spaceflight: that NERVA nuclear rocket could push altogether Grand Tour-like probes to the outer solar system or manned expeditions to the Moon or Mars !
Politics made things even more murky. The Senate had had a dedicated committee devoted to space; its chairman, Clinton Anderson, was a die-hard fan of NERVA. Not that nuclear energy or spaceflight mattered much to him: the harsh truth was that the nuke employed many peoples in New Mexico, the very state Anderson was senator.
Another supporter of NERVA was the Nevada senator, nothing surprising again since the nuke testbeds were located high on the desert there. And there was also representative Chester Holifield, a nuclear lobbyist and representative of California altogether. Holifield massed as much power as Anderson, reigning supreme over the Atomic Energy Commission and its big nuclear labs - Oak Ridge, Livermore and Los Alamos. Low knew that better than anybody else. A year before the nuclear lobby in Congress had grilled him over the agonizing NERVA.
"Now, let's get to this question that you have raised that the shuttle is the only vehicle that could launch the NERVA. The NERVA was not originally proposed as a part of the shuttle program, was it?" "When NERVA was originally planned, and until about 2 or 3 years ago, NERVA would have been launched into space using a large conventional booster like the Saturn V. However, we have now made a decision, which we discussed with the committee last year, to suspend production on the Saturn V. We only have enough Saturn V's available for Apollo, Skylab, plus two spares beyond that. So the only vehicle in our planning in NASA today for NERVA is the shuttle. "But this committee last year told you to take whatever action was necessary to try to match up the shuttle with the NERVA, "And that has been done. "Yes; but that is not the only alternative. It would still be possible to launch NERVA on an upgraded Titan III, would it not? "I do not know whether an upgraded Titan III could lift the NERVA engine. I will have to ask Milton Klein on that. "Well, Mr. Klein, then? "Senator Cannon, it does appear that an upgraded Titan would have the weight lifting capability to launch the NERVA engine. It would require a modular approach similar in nature to that we are planning in conjunction with the shuttle mission and program standpoint, there are, of course, other factors which make the shuttle the attractive."
Damn the congressmen, and damn the politics. Low just hated that stuff, it was the core reason why he had refused the job of administrator.
He had also heard a rumour that NASA best ennemies Walter Mondale and William Proxmire were bracing themselves for another anti-shuttle campaign - although, as far as Low was concerned, they would now beat a dead horse. He had no issue with that provided that kept them away from the space station.
Now another actor had entered the shark pool of politics: NASA own center, Marshall, apparently had decided to play the wild card.
Eberhard Rees had been von Braun right arm and immediate successor at the Redstone Arsenal. Rees obviously wanted as much work as possible for its center, rightly fearing it might been closed after Apollo wound down.
Rees had all too well understood how all the six large endeavours – the shuttle, the space station and its capsule, the NERVA, Grand Tour, Large Telescope, and Viking – weighed over, and in far greatly exceeded, the NASA budget for the next fiscal years. So Rees had cooked its own recipe from these elements, and lobbied Low hard to impose his solution, enraging many people in the process. According to Rees, Marshall could play a major role in every of the six big programs. If NASA ever build the shuttle, Marshall could play the card of its sophisticated engines – after all they had certified Apollo F-1 and J-2. If NASA ever build a space station, well, Skylab was already a nice foray in this direction, wasn't it ? Marshall also proposed a smaller NERVA as a space tug and, of course, upper stages of a new batch of its cherished Saturn boosters. The fact that NASA had been forced to use the Air Force Titan made Rees mad: he couldn't believed Saturn would not ultimately won the day. With a nuclear upper stage a Saturn could either boost a heavier Large Space Telescope to a very high orbit, or launch the Grand Tour probes onto very, very fast trajectories toward the outer planets or even boost all three Vikings to Mars into a single launch !
Rees message was crystal clear.
Can't you see ? Marshall can fold every big space project you want into a single, coherent program. The very objective the Space Task Group failed miserably at in 1969
The problem was that Rees was going over many asses doing that, angering a lot of peoples in the process.
Johnson was furious since Marshall intruded into its manned spaceflight turf.
Goddard was furious since Marshall intruded over the space telescope business.
JPL was furious because Marshall interfered with Grand Tour and Viking altogether, probes that had already booked their ride to space a top Titan rockets.
The space telescope thing was worrisome. Truth be told, Goddard had way too much projects on its plate; the center was seriously overloaded with science and applications satellites. So Marshall had proposed itself, not only for the future telescope, but also for a near term forerunner, the HEAO – High Energy Astronomical Observatories.
In 1969 Marshall had been made lead center for that program, but since then and under Rees influence, HEAO had become four huge, expensive satellites: yet another expensive program on NASA plate. So Low had now to deal with Marshall fierce activism, along with the sheer weight of seven large scale projects that together busted the limits of NASA shrinking budget.
There will probably be no real winner, he thought.
The shuttle was already dead, NERVA was moribund and would probably not survive for long. The space telescope and Viking would probably not be affected, being, one too early, the other too late, in their respective developments. The space station decision had not been made yet, only a dumb capsule that would probably weight very little over the next three years.
That made the Grand Tour a notable winner; it was, however, a pyrrhic victory. The National Academies Woods Hole meeting, held in August 1971, had recommended a downscaling of the project to a couple of improved Mariner probes, with an eventual third, backup probe to be launched later, completing the earlier mission. Downscaling the Grand Tour meant that the funds earn there could go to Viking; perhaps they could stuck with the five life-seeking experiments planned earlier. The Space telescope could also be accelerated, perhaps tied to the space station for limited on-orbit servicing since there would be no shuttle to retrieve it and bring it back to Earth for checkout, maintenance and uprating…
Another urgent problem was that Low was essentially driving NASA alone since Fletcher departure. He had already made a stint as acting administrator a year before, filling a seven months gap between Tom Paine and Fletcher. He very much doubted Nixon would undergo again the excruciating, painful task of finding another external administrator.
But he didn't wanted the job.
And then the phone rung. President Nixon himself.
"We reviewed again the short list of potential NASA administrators we had a year ago – minus Fletcher of course. You, Jameson of Teledyne, and my under-secretary of transportation, are the top-ranking candidates.
We don't like Jameson very much – too aggressive and arrogant, he might be a new Tom Paine.
So that let you and the other man. We want you, since you've been at NASA for such a long time… say yes, and you'll be administrator." Here we go again. "I can't accept. But I think James Beggs is the right man." There was a very brief silence on the phone. Yes, I knew the name of your undersecretary of transportation, mister President... "I swear you refuse, then ?" "Indeed. But I'm quite sure Beggs can do the job, and I'll remain his deputy administrator as long as needed." Nixon spoke for a minute, then the conversation ended.
So it would be Beggs. Good luck to you. With NERVA agonizing and the Shuttle dead, it was obvious that unmanned spaceflight had won the day.
What was left of manned spaceflight ?
Skylab, the last two Apollo to the Moon, and a new manned capsule that ensured future of manned spaceflight, perhaps packaged with a new, modular space station. While the shuttle costs did not allowed any space station beyond Skylab, the much less expensive Big Gemini did. Big Gemini ? It occurred to Low that even that one was nothing but secured. North American Rockwell had protested loudly, and they had been heard by Congress. A new bidding process would be held; the Request For Proposal had already been send to the contractors.
Sure enough, the year to come promised to be a difficult one. NASA was starved of political support; they desesperately needed new allies in Congress to secure a project bigger than Big Gemini or any capsule - probably a space station.
But the space station, much like the shuttle before it, lacked apeal in Congress. By contrast the NERVA, agonizing as it was, still had a very robust political base. Perhaps they should try to play that political card; perhaps they could try and sell Congress a small NERVA as a nuclear space tug to push satellites into geosynchronous orbit... later that tug would be a backdoor to future manned missions to the Moon. Low had heard a rumour according to which Ames director Hans Mark and Wernher von Braun himself were leading a desesperate charge to save the space shuttle, arguing it was paramount to man presence into space.
In turn, von Braun pledged that people were absolutely essential if NASA was going to conduct really sophisticated space operations. There was no real substitute to human judgement and imagination on the spot, and only people can take advantage of unexpected opportunities and deal with emergencies. All good arguments, George Low felt, but not receivable at the time. It was too late for the shuttle, but there was still hope for man in space - if only because of Weinberger pledge of August 1971. Von Braun was on the way out of NASA, to a post at Fairchild. As for Hans Mark, if he wanted to save his head and his center programs he would have to tune down the rethoric. The fact was that Ames could have made some interesting contribution to the shuttle, and the loss of it would be heavily felt there. The center had very diverse programs - aircraft laboratories, the Pioneer planetary probes, and a thing called PAET - Planetary Atmosphere Experiments Test, a capsule to be boosted by a Scout rocket on a dress rehearsal of future planetary entry probes. That was damn expensive for a single test, so Hans Mark searched for spinoffs. Ames Pioneer once competed with JPL Mariners, but the two were expensive, so the Pioneer program was being cut instead into a low-cost probe to complement JPL expensive space Cadillacs.
In 1968, the Academies had recommended that NASA initiate now a program of Pioneer/Interplanetary Monitoring Platform-class spinning spacecraft for orbiting Venus and Mars at each opportunity, and for exploratory missions to other targets. Which meant that Ames Pioneer no longer competed with JPL Mariner but with Goddard Explorers satellites that went farther and farther (the Interplanetary Monitoring Platforms), some of them as far as lunar orbit. Which in turn made Goddard a new competitor in the planetary race ! So the low-cost probe competition would boil down to Goddard IMP versus Ames Pioneer. A universal planetary bus, following a Delta launch, could deploy a variety of scientific payloads, including atmospheric probes, landers, or orbiters. Low felt Hans Mark did not fully supported the Pioneer program. Perhaps von Braun had convinced him robots were crap and only men could do a proper job. If this is really the case, Low thought, I ought better shut down Pioneer and give the low-cost planetary probe to Goddard. But then I'll have to found a new spinoff to that PAET.
Perhaps the space station crew could drop experiments down to Earth aboard diminutive PAET capsules - lots of them. Kind of space courrier. That would please Mark anyway, since the job would imply astronauts. Mark had in fact send Low a memo where he made clear he wanted to shut down the Pioneer probe program.
He gave three reasons for that. The memo first went on to say “in the last decade, the United States has spent on the average a half a billion dollars on space science. I personally find it difficult to believe that we have a cultural or intellectual justification for continuing our space science effort at the same level for the indefinite future. The results of space science to date have not been of major significance.”
The second reason followed “I see space exploration as a luxury that may soon be canceled due to the though times we currently live in. So I think my center should embrace military missions. Defence isn't a luxury.”
The last reason was obviously Von Braun himself, a man that greatly impressed Mark. Von Braun liked men in space, something the Pioneer robots were definitively not.
Well, ok, Hans, if you think shutting down the Pioneer is fine, let's do it. But that may give JPL a complete monopoly over robotic planetary exploration...