One people landed on the moon, the space race was "over" and NASA became an expensive prestige project that would not have another big prestige payoff.
While the costs of Vietnam was certainly a factor, when NASA's big ambitions failed, Vietnam was no longer happening. The real killer was the desire for increased social spending, and many people were uncomfortable explaining why expensive NASA projects were being supported when there was still so much urban poverty.
Excuse me? In 1969 Vietnam wasn't happening? In 1970, 1971 Vietnam wasn't happening? Last time I checked, the US didn't pull out of Vietnam until 1973, a year after NASA had irrevocably committed itself to Shuttle.
NASA had a limited model. After Apollo, it really needed strategic thinking on how space exploration could continue. What should have happened was:
It did attempt to develop strategic thinking on how space exploration could continue. However, a combination of overly idealistic administrators, a budgetary iron bind imposed by a hostile Congress, and excessive ambition on NASA's part meant that all that strategic thinking was completely abandoned. But they certainly did try to think through the future.
1) A strategy to determine how private space exploration/enterprises could happen.
2) Identifying key technologies to develop and encouraging them through X Prizes.
This is just not realistic for the late 1960s and early 1970s. Space needed to be much more mature and developed for people to really get started on privatizing it; starting that process at this point is putting the cart before the horse. It's like saying that Britain, in the 1800s, should have created a modern fiat money/central bank system. Well, maybe, but the theoretical sophistication and financial experience that led to the creation of the modern system in the twentieth century just
isn't there yet, and there are insuperable cultural and mental barriers towards that direction in play.
Similarly here. COMSAT, the government funded corporation in charge of communications satellites was founded just a few years earlier. Intelsat is still the only real player in the international biz, and it's under the control of a group of governments. The French and Germans are working on Symphonie, yeah, but again, that's a group of governments. Transit is the most sophisticated navigation system in the world (and again, governmental). So on and so forth. Privatization would be like having Leo X go, "Yeah, you know this German cat Luther? Pretty great guy, man. We ought to do what he's talking about." Only there's not even a Luther yet, it would be Leo X kicking off the Reformation of his own will.
3) Keeping Skylab in orbit.
Although Skylab was pretty, there were multiple significant obstacles to continued use. First and foremost, it simply had not been designed for continued use and servicing, being more of a very large version of the
Tiangong or (early)
Salyut stations that was launched with all the equipment and supplies it would need already aboard and installed. By the end of the program, it was doubtful whether it could support more than a month or so of further occupancy, and certain critical systems like the trash airlock were showing alarming indications of failure.
Second, it had a drastically different internal pressure than the Shuttle, meaning that it would be difficult (although far from impossible) for people to go from one to the other. While not unsolvable, it was an issue that would, of course, not arise in any new space station program (which could--and did, of course--resolve the first problem as well).
Third, as I noted above it was simply getting worn out by the end of the program. While not outright to the point of failure, a number of critical systems were reaching their design lifetimes or showing problems (again, the trash airlock is a perfect example), and most of these critical systems were not designed for on-orbit repair or replacement. That's not to mention how many of its systems were a decade or more behind the time--'60s era technology, compared to the Shuttle's '70s era equipment (and upgrades to bring them into the '80s and beyond).
4) Changing emphasis from "more, faster" to "cheaper, smaller" in terms of satellites, etc.
This actually doesn't make any sense. People
do keep introducing (relatively) small sats (it's happened in the '60s, '80s, '90s...), but inevitably it turns out that bigger, more expensive satellites are more economical for a lot of things. Not
everything of course, there is value in small sats, but generally costs scale up less rapidly than benefits for larger satellites (up to a point) and there are things small satellites just can't do, like direct home television broadcast. Besides, at this point there aren't really any smallsat launchers, which renders the whole exercise much less practical because you have to spend more or less the same amount of money regardless of satellite weight, as long as it's less than the maximum weight your vehicle can lift.
5) Not relying solely on the Shuttle, but keeping ongoing rockets until the Shuttle proved it would be cheaper.
But if you don't rely solely on Shuttle, it
won't be cheaper, in the long or short run. They knew this perfectly well, it's still true today (in that reusable designs generally need high flight rates on the order of "all the satellites" to be economically superior to expendables), and that's why they got rid of all the competition.
A less ambitious program would be more sustanable, and probably lead to more cumulative success in the long term.
Agreed, but that lack of ambition needs to start in the '50s, not the '70s. By the '70s, it's probably too late (ETS notwithstanding) to stop the Shuttle train, and that is probably going to end up somewhere near OTL at best (you might get marginal improvements by shrinking NASA budgets even more and having them develop a "glider" crew transport shuttle that's little more than a big lifting body Apollo. But it's not going to be a big improvement in economics or anything). And the combination of invested infrastructure and high development costs is going to make it difficult for the US to move beyond Shuttle, particularly if it's much like the OTL form.
Disagree.
Neither the space shuttle nor the ISS are what was envisioned in 1959. The former is not a cost-effective transport system, and the latter is not a base for space exploration.
E of Pi said it right--it's all about motivation. Space travel is totally doable given money spent on the project. It is also not economically self-sustaining. But neither is the military. We do it anyway.
The Space Race was a side effect of the missile race. For the Space Race to continue with the same intensity with which it started, there has to be motivation. The Soviets making it to the moon could have done it.
The Space Shuttle is not a cost-effective transportation system because the technology and conceptual thinking of the 1960s and 1970s could not actually result in a cost-effective reusable launch vehicle. It was certainly
intended to be, to some extent, the conceptual replacement for von Braun's shuttlecraft (although originally with Saturn Vs for heavy lift because already developed) Similarly with the ISS--that, at least, could (and can) technologically have been a jumping-off point, but of course funding issues prevented it. Nevertheless, there have been a
lot of plans to use the ISS for further exploration--even today, there's the Exploration Platform concept which would leverage the ISS both directly and indirectly.