the space station decision
Huntington Beach, California.
September 6 1972.
A special ceremony marked completion of the Orbital Workshop (OWS), the main section of the Skylab space station. The workshop, with a volume equivalent to that of a five-room house, was being readied for shipment to Cape Kennedy aboard the USNS Point Barrow. The trip would take thirteen days.
President Nixon, campaigning against George McGovern, was present.
The scope of the ceremony largely outpaced Skylab, itself the ultimate extension of Apollo. In George Low and James Beggs thinking, only a space station could replace the Shuttle as NASA main program of the 70’s.
Skylab represented a useful, but primitive step in this direction. The program was led by Marshall, a center which still sought a role in the post Apollo era.
Since 1969 aerospace industry people and other aerospace professionals frequently presented ideas for space stations at conferences. NASA had released a 42-pages long booklet entitled Space Station: Key to the Future even before agreement had been reached on the design of a shuttle.
The American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, an important forum for legitimizing new space program ideas, published a study favourable to space stations entitled The Manned Orbital Facility: A User's Guide.
It stimulated a lot discussion about the uses of a space station.
At the time of shuttle cancellation the America was a year away from electing a new president, meaning that if NASA wanted its station, it had to act in a hurry.
James Beggs early action as administrator had been to discretely ask three NASA centers – Houston, Marshall and Langley – their vision of a space station. He insisted on the fact that the station had to find a national objective if NASA wanted Congress to fund it.
Marshall submitted the “Manned Orbital Systems Concept” concept. In the MOSC study, emphasis was placed on space stations performing research programs directly related to the improvement of life on Earth.
“Earth observation would increase knowledge in meteorology, climatology, oceanography, and atmospheric phenomena, while research on the behaviour of materials in the absence of gravity offered the chance to manufacture new medicines and materials not possible on Earth. By using remote sensing aboard a space station, NASA was quick to point out that nations could be alerted to impending droughts, harmful agricultural practices, and over- development.”
Marshall MOSC evidently looked similar to Skylab. In fact the center had worked with Douglas, adding some photos of a hastily build model.
It was basically a stripped-down Revell Skylab A with two Helios docked to an enlarged workshop. The whole think looked similar to a picture found in an old Douglas Big Gemini brochure.
Houston proposal was a simplified Modular Space Station, which Phase B contractor studies had been issued on February, 1.
Langley proposal was a rehash of their old Manned Orbital Research Laboratory, essentially an American Salyut that had been killed by Apollo peak funding in 1965.
Cancellation of the Shuttle had been a terrible blow for the aerospace industry. The shuttle followed the SuperSonic Transport, which had been cancelled in spring 1971.
Nixon died very hard on the supersonic transport and he had been terribly troubled to go to an international conference and have the French president Pompidou arrive in a Concorde.
In an attempt to recoup, Nixon senior advisors tried to launch an effort called the New Technology Opportunities Program (NTOP), which sought to define specific projects that might be ripe for federal support. It was no surprise that the key man in this effort, William Magruder, had been Nixon's head of the supersonic transport program. The NTOP was to be Nixon own New Frontier and Great Society. It dealt with clean energy, war against cancer and drug and control of natural disasters.
One important proposal called for full-scale development of high-speed rail transportation in the Northeast, laying new rail and refurbishing passenger stations.
Another proposal envisioned the development of two-way television. Two-way TV would allow individual citizens to communicate directly with city social-service agencies, including health, welfare, and police-protection programs.
Another concept promised to develop integrated utilities, which would combine sewage and solid-waste disposal, power, heat, and light within a single system.
The Atomic Energy Commission had a long-running interest in peaceful uses of nuclear explosives. Its officials endorsed a demonstration project that would use multiple detonations to fracture impermeable rock formations that held natural gas. Another plan proposed to build offshore terminals for deep-draft supertankers that drew too much water to enter conventional ports. Such terminals promised to cut shipping costs by eliminating the need to route the supertankers to the Caribbean, where they would transfer their cargoes of oil to smaller tankers of lesser draft.
Soon however the reviewers discovered that the prospective domestic initiatives carried difficulties that ranged well beyond the merely technical. So they declined to endorse any of Magruder's proposals, and the main reason was that in the course of the NTOP exercise, key people had come to realize that they truly knew little about the process of technological innovation. The New Technology Opportunities Program did not survived the shuttle for long, yet represented a serious White House attempt to redirect the resources of aerospace toward new domestic priorities.
When the attempt faltered late 1971, it soon became clear that Nixon would not try to help the beleaguered aerospace industry by having its people work on mass transit or pollution control.
Instead, he would give them an election-year gift by keeping that industry's resources within the realm of aerospace. Helios represented only a minor step in this area; something as bigger as the shuttle was obviously needed.
The twin demises of the SST and space shuttle, only six months appart, evidently worried the aerospace industry. There were real fears that America might lost its technological edge to Europe or, even worse, to the Soviet Union.
The Supersonic transport and the shuttle represented both end of the high-speed spectrum - mach 2.5 and Mach 25 respectively. As a result the President Science Advisory Committe was tasked with defining a program of "global research in high speed aircrafts" that of course would involve NASA.
Coincidentally, as the shuttle agonized early November 1971 the Langley research center, Hampton, Virginia, had hold a big conference - Vehicle technology for civil aviation, the seventies and beyond.
Many options were considered that involved many past, present and future vehicles.
Consideration was given to completion and test flight a Boeing supersonic transport prototype, assembly of a third XB-70 Walkyrie as a testbed for the SST engine, extended flight tests of Lockheed A-12s and SR-71s, returning a X-15 to flight status, launching subscale space shuttle models, or building more lifting bodies. The SST program had also led a couple of 300 ft long full scale mockups the FAA was very interested in. The A-12 fleet of a dozen aircrafts had been mothballed in 1968.
The X-15 option was given serious consideration, but was ultimately scrapped. The X-15A-2 had nearly melted itself, another X-15 had been destroyed leaving the older, less performing bird as the sole survivor.
Instead what was preferred was to try and build a subscale shuttle orbiter... powered by the very X-15 XLR-99 engine. Incidentally, while the X-15 was long gone, a little piece of harware had survived and was still undergoing ground test in hypersonic wind tunnels. That was the HRE - the Hypersonic Research Engine, a podded scramjet the brainchild of Tony Du Pont.
That October 3, 1967 when the X-15A-2 had both flown at Mach 6.7 and melted, it carried a HRE mockup clung to a rear fuselage pylon. It had been that very pylon that caused disturbances in the superheated airflow, somewhat destroying the X-15 in the process.
Langley was already studying post-Shuttle space transportation. Veteran lifting body manager Eugene Love was chief of the Center's Space Systems Division, which had recently been formed to support the Space Shuttle program by conducting aerodynamic analysis and tests of the design concepts to determine the vehicle's overall configuration, that is, would it be a single-stage or a two-stage vehicle? Or would it be a stage-and-a-half vehicle (the current configuration)?
Those contractors vying for the Shuttle contract submitted their design concepts to Langley for testing, and NASA Headquarters turned to Langley for an objective aerodynamic analysis of those design concepts.
Gene Love realized that NASA would require a launch vehicle after the Space Shuttle, so he formed a small group to look at possible post-Shuttle (Shuttle II) vehicles. Love was influenced by a program called C/SGT, Continental/SemiGlobal Transport.
The C/SGT vehicle would take off, almost attain orbit, then land, the object being to take people or cargo from any place on Earth to any other place on Earth in less than two hours. Gene Love realized that the C/SGT vehicle, with modifications, might become a single-stage-to-orbit vehicle. However, research would be necessary before that could take place.
So, a small group in the Vehicle Analysis Branch of the Space Systems Division began studying single-stage-to-orbit vehicles, as well as two-stage vehicles, to determine what technologies were needed. Every five years or so, as new technologies became available, such as composite materials in airframes, cryogenic fuel tanks made of composites and other advanced materials (such as titanium aluminides), and new thermal protection systems, the Vehicle Analysis Branch redid these vehicle design studies. They had no complex exploring exotic concepts.
Among NASA centers Houston had its hands full with the crew transportation system and the future space station. Marshall future was threatened.
In this context, Langley, Gene Love and his Vehicle Analysis Branch become the shuttle last stronghold - and more.
Boeing's 2707 SST was dead, the shuttle was dead, the X-15 was gone, and that left Langley and Dryden lifting bodies as the last high-speed testbed on hand.
Speed, however, was no longer fashionable; there was a profund move toward slower, more fuel efficient and environment friendly aircrafts.
The PSAC ultimate recommendation was a mix of sustained lifting body research and subscale shuttle models.
Meanwhile debate focused on what America wanted from its space program, what it could afford, and what could be achieved. Many agencies, organizations, and U.S. leaders had been called upon to form positions on the subject.
Public debate was to prove healthy for NASA. With momentum building, the space agency decided to make a major push for a space station, and by this time it was ready to talk the language of national objectives.
On the wake of Beggs request to the three centers, NASA created an intercenter Space Station Task Force in February 1972. It would have the difficult task to lay a firm foundation for justifying the expense of a space station program.
Instead of the old NASA pattern of first studying what a space station could do and then how it might be built, the Task Force asked industry and the scientific community to focus on what American national objectives the space station could satisfy. Many were asked the following question:
“If the United States were to acquire an initial civilian ‘space station’ complex in low- Earth-orbit in the 1980’s, who could use it, how could they use it, what attributes, capabilities, and types of components should it therefore have, what would it cost, when could it become available, and what benefits could its use provide?”
The design would be molded around these conclusions. George Mueller summed up the philosophy to Beggs and Low in May 1972.
“It’s easy to design a space station.... What’s not so easy is putting together all the elements in a design that is useful to the nation and realistic in terms of today’s economic conditions.”
Results had been published in July 1972. From the study, three U.S. national objectives were defined:
1. to solve world problems through research
2. to support space infrastructure
3. to serve as a staging base and testbed for Mars and/or lunar missions.
Of course Moon and Mars were out of the question, thus Beggs quietly dropped Point 3. The others two sounded valid.
Then eight mission objectives—essentially Willy Ley’s list from 1944—were identified to support the remaining national objectives.
1. An on-orbit National Laboratory supporting research on a wide range of life, materials, and other science topics, and the development of new technology
2. Permanent observatories for astronomy and Earth remote sensing
3. A facility for microgravity materials processing and manufacturing of products
4. Servicing of satellites and platforms
5. A transportation hub to assemble, check out, and launch space vehicles
6. An assembly facility for large space structures
7. A storage depot for spare parts, fuel, and supplies for use by satellites, platforms, vehicles, and people
8. A staging base for more ambitious future projects and travel (e.g., a lunar settlement or a human voyage to Mars)
Points 1 and 2 were controversial. Indeed NASA – at least the human spaceflight side of the agency - had conflicting relations with science, as demonstrated in the Apollo program.
When created by Eisenhower in 1958, NASA was supposed to be science-driven. That idea did not lasted long, however. First, NASA inherited from NACA a large a large engineering bureaucracy, as well as a symbolic mission to accomplish impressive tasks and symbolize American technological progress.
Then, Kennedy started Apollo as a politically-driven adventure and the single goal of humiliating the Soviets.
In the scheme of things science only came a distant third - although, with the political goal accomplished beyond the wildest expectations, the last landings and Skylab had more room for experiments. But science alone could not save Apollo, and Skylab proved to be a dead-end.
As for the shuttle - the shuttle was to be developed as a space truck to haul payloads in and out of Earth orbit. These included scientific payloads, some of which were operated in the shuttle’s payload bay, such as dedicated life sciences missions. But science did not really justified the shuttle.
The scientist community was slightly more interested by the space station. Indeed the eight points in the list could be broadly grouped into four categories.
1&2 obviously represented science.
3 represented commerce, while the science “old enemy”, engineering, was present in points 4, 5, 6, 7.
Point 8 had essentially died with the Space Task Group proposals.
So at first glance it looked that engineering had once again an edge over science. This failed to consider the lack of shuttle… concepts of microgravity materials processing, satellite servicing, large structure assembly, space hub and orbital storage all implied a cheap access to low-Earth-orbit, precisely the space shuttle main promise.
In the absence of a reusable launch vehicle, and in the wake of Skylab, science was left to prevail.
It has been a masterstroke from the returning George Mueller.
But the battle had been hard fought.
As shown in the Apollo era, a fracture was tearing NASA apart: the scientists and engineers just hated each others.
JPL and Goddard were fighting Marshall and Johnson.
As the director of the Office of Manned Space Flight at times Mueller had found himself at odds with the Office of Space Science and Applications boss Homer Newell.
Clearly there was cultural rift there, and lot of uncomprehension between the two sides, resulting in years long mutual bickering and bitterness.
But Apollo, and most of all Skylab, had taught lessons. The two rival offices and culture had learned to work together - from the Lunar Orbiter robots imaging future Apollo landing sites to Skylab telescope mount. If they ever tried to create a joint OSSA / OMSF within either office, or at a NASA center like Houston or Langley or Goddard, Mueller reasoned his chairman would be as impotent as a Nevada boxing commissioner.
So Mueller first decision was to setup the mixed committee in Washington, out of the inter-center rivalries. Then, he tried to have the space station concept transcend the old engineering / science rivalry. Using the Space Station Task Force as basis, Mueller created what was looked like an eleventh NASA center dedicated to the space station and nothing else. He essentially recycled Apollo proven structures, such as Lee Scherer Lunar Exploration Board.
In the Apollo days Scherer's appointment had been considered a management masterstroke by Mueller. Having managed the highly successful Lunar Orbiter Program Scherer was well liked and trusted by John Naugle, the head of the science side of NASA. Yet the close connection of Scherer's Lunar Orbiter to Apollo made him well known to the manned, engineering side.
Mueller wanted Scherer to manage the space tug office.
Scherer, however, was on leave from Apollo to Edwards AFB, California, where NASA had one of his four aeronautic centers. Mueller had Beggs cancelling the assignment, on behalf that Paul Bikle would be more needed than ever, since the lack of space shuttle would make Edwards lifting bodies even more important.
To go along Scherer Mueller picked-up a host of Ranger, Lunar Orbiter, Surveyor and Apollo scientists to join the new organization he called the CASIS - the Committee for Advancement of Science at the International Station.
Of course Houston was furious because they had not been given the space station, at least not completely. Mueller keep them at bait through various arguments and means; first and foremost they had to make Big Gemini operational, if only to secure manned space flight.
Secondly, there would be a backup, twin station core module build as an insurance against a possible launch failure. Mueller strategy was to committ Houston to engineering -driven grandiose studies of that second station.
In the 80's we will have the shuttle and it will help building a formidable orbital facility.
It will be a transportation hub to assemble, check out, and launch space vehicles, an assembly facility for large space structures, a storage depot for spare parts, fuel, and supplies for use by satellites, platforms, vehicles, and people and ultimately a staging base for more ambitious future projects and travel (e.g., a lunar settlement or a human voyage to Mars.
That kind of discourse evidently stroke a nerve in Houston, Texas.
Mueller happily let Houston churning paper study after paper study. Lastly was a clear warning to Houston: adapt to the tight budget, or you'll be cut. Noone is safe. Manned spaceflight can still be cut altogether.
Thanks to Mueller harrowing efforts when James Beggs finally reported to the Senate Committee on Appropriations, he described an on-orbit laboratory supporting research on a wide range of life, materials, and other science topics, and the development of new technology. He spoke about permanent observatories for astronomy and Earth remote sensing. About general space science research, remote Earth sensing, and - eventually - microgravity research.
To this point, the debate had been fruitful : the future space station had now two national objectives, and its role would fall in three major categories. Then come the unavoidable question. Could a space station be funded in parallel ? And how much would it cost?
Changing Helios cargo module into a bare-bone station would cost $0.7 billion. Helios spacecrafts could be docked to an uprated Skylab, each mission adding a module to the complex. In comparison, Skylab had a cost of $2.6 billion only, with a huge internal volume. This explained by the fact it had been built from spare S-IVBs with Apollo subsystems. Skylab was also a dead-end, in the sense it had no thrusters to keep it in orbit; its life supportsystem was outdated; and it was not built for resupply nor long duration in space. Three missions and 18 months in space would worn it out definitively. As a result Marshall had conducted a study on more Skylabs, and found the unit cost would drop to $2 billion each. But of course each Skylab took a massive Saturn V to reach orbit, and that ruinous rocket was no longer available.
The MORL and EOSS paper space stations from the mid-60’s looked more promising. Back in 1968, another study had compared their respective costs, in relation with the forthcoming Skylab. The 3-men MORL was very, very similar to the soviet Salyut, for a cost of $3 billion. The EOSS, a 6 men Skylab/ MORL hybrid, rose to $4.2 billion. Last but not least, costs estimations for the Modular Space Station had been issued on February 1 1972. It had been estimated that a six-men crew modular space station would cost $4.5 billion. Twelve men brought this to $6.4 billion.
From all this, it seemed that a modular space station would roughly cost $5 billions. Compared to the shuttle, overall cost could be spread over a long period – or cut, by dropping modules if needed.
Now the President was to be convinced. 1972 was an election year, Nixon campaigning against George McGovern. In September he toured California, visiting Lockheed Palmdale, North American Downey and Douglas Huntington Beach, among others. Downey had been home of Apollo; Shuttle orbiters would probably have rolled down their production line had the Shuttle not been cancelled. Nixon needed to keep people employed in key states, including California.
Low and Beggs were now lobbying to Nixon with the following arguments
“NASA will soon have a temporary space station in Skylab. Meanwhile, the Soviet Union has begun putting up its Salyut space stations last year, and will continuing to use them in the next future. Technologies for a much better space station than Salyut or Skylab are within US reach.”
Late August Nixon finally gave a go-ahead to a space station program. However he balked at the cost, and his staff picked away element out of the orbital facility. George Mueller was forced to watch, helpless, his cherished space station cut. All talk of artificial gravity and nuclear power was dropped, and the twelve men crew extending to a hundred was cut to a definitive six astronauts.
This September 6, 1972 Nixon addressed Douglas employees. John Ehrlichman, and George M. Low and James Beggs were present. Politics for a space station decision were right now. Low and Beggs flew out to California, editing two NASA statements along the way.
Nixon greeted him at the Douglas plant, as did John Ehrlichman. Though the President had planned to spend only fifteen minutes at the plant, the meeting ran well beyond a half-hour as he showed strong interest in Helios and the space station. Low had brought Marshall’s model of the space station, and Ehrlichman would remember "Nixon's fascination with the model. And he held it and, in fact, I wasn't sure that Low was going to be able to get it away from him when the thing was over."
Nixon greeted the workers and engineers, promised he would preserve their jobs, and finally disclosed the space station project with these words
“ I have decided today that the United States should proceed at once with the development of an entirely new type of space infrastructure; designed to help transform the space frontier of the 1970s into familiar territory, easily accessible for human endeavour in the 1980s and '90s.
I am directing NASA to develop a permanently manned space station and to do it within a decade. This system will center on a space station that can support science in space. It will introduce business in space, by routinizing it. It will take the astronomical costs out of astronautics. In short, it will go a long way toward delivering the rich benefits of practical space utilization and the valuable spin-offs from space efforts into the daily lives of Americans and all people...
Views of the earth from space have shown us how small and fragile our home planet truly is. We are learning the imperatives of universal brotherhood and global ecology-learning to think and act as guardians of one tiny blue and green island in the trackless oceans of the universe. This new program will give more people more access to the liberating perspectives of space....
"We must sail sometimes with the wind and sometimes against it," said Oliver Wendell Holmes, "but we must sail, and not drift, nor lie at anchor." So with man's epic voyage into space-a voyage the United States of America has led and still shall lead.
“Skylab is only a first step into this new area. Obviously the next step should be a permanently manned space station with a crew of 6 or more in 1980. We will build a Skylab follow-on, a first step in the colonization of space”.
The space station decision was made at least.
The last few months had seen George Low once again take a pivotal role in a major national decision with at stake national prestige, tens of billions of dollars spread across many years, and hundreds of high-profile careers in politics, industry, the military.
Someday he was going to write a book about all of it. Yes, he would have to do that - writting his memories, perhaps from his own personal notes. Although the very concept of memories ran counter to his extreme discretion; he was no von Braun, he just hated anything that looked like a spotlight...
George Low felt exhausted, like never before. He used to be a workalcoholic, and to endure 80 or even 90 hours of work per week, and his body used to take it well. But this time... damn, I think I've pushed a little too far.
From the start of the year, Low and his new boss Jim Beggs had started to put it about that the aerospace industry might not be able to survive another year of diminished space work. Low spoke particularly to congressmen from states like California, Texas, and Florida, where aerospace depression was an acute electoral issue. And he quietly encouraged the contractors contributing to the various program studies to talk up their estimates of the employment the various options would stimulate. It was all designed to keep the pressure on the White House.
Nineteen seventy-two is an election year !
We need a space program to keep the aerospace guys in work !
It had come to a head, at last, today. Beggs had been asked to a meeting with Ed David, other Presidential aides, and representatives of the Office of Management and Budget.
Ed David, Beggs told Low, had opened the meeting briskly. “You’re going to get your space package, Jim - a space taxi together with a space station, a scaled-down Grand Tour, more funds for Viking and the Large Telescope together with Skylab and the last two Apollo lunar landings. All this against my better judgement.”
“The President’s approving the program.”
“Yes.” Ed David shuffled papers. “There are still some decisions to be made about size and cost…”
Beggs grunted. “What decided him?”
“A number of factors. The point that we can’t afford to forgo manned spaceflight altogether, for our prestige at home and abroad.” He sounded rueful. “We’re stuck with you, Jim. That the space taxi / space station mission is the only option we have that is meaningful and could be accomplished on a modest budget. That we were only thinking of cutting NASA anyway because we could. That not starting the program would be damaging to the aerospace industry…”
The meeting had started haggling over details, the wording of a Presidential announcement.
But the decision was made.
He supposed he ought to be feeling triumph. Exultation. We’ve got what we wanted, by God. Another huge boondoggle, a program that ought to keep thousands of NASA employees gainfully employed for a decade or more.
But the truth was, he felt too beat-up to care.
He was having a little trouble focusing his eyes.
He’d been chained to his desk and phone for weeks, working in support of Begg’s machinations. And there were still a hundred and one things to be finished up.
The next day he had a meeting in Houston, and he had to catch a flight very early in the morning. It was exhausting, but he had promised himself some holidays as soon as possible; after all the space station decision was now secured, and manned spaceflight with it.
He felt a brief surge of emotion as he passed the space center gate. The meeting was a two-hour affair, after that he would return Washington and eventually, his home. On the way back he passed near his old office, full of memories. Marylin Bockting was gone, but he was pleased to meet Judy Wyatt, and to discuss James Bond movies with her. She knew he was a notable fan of 007.
In fact, Judy Wyatt thought, this is the only thing I really know about that enigmatic man. Who are you, George Low ? noone knew.
Noone knew that George Low, as a teenager, had fled from Austria with its parents; they were jews, and the nazis were on their heels. But a man like Von Braun – an aristocratic German – had actually been a member of the nazi party, although certainly not by conviction. Did Low resented that ? Noone knew.
George Low waved Wyatt goodbye, and went to the stairs, and suddendly at the last degree he felt the fatigue, like an enormous weight falling on him.
His legs betrayed him without a warning.
He missed the last step, and fell heavily.
For a fraction of second everything seemed to go still; memories from his parents, his youth in Austria, the flee away from the nazis, his wife, NACA, NASA, Kennedy, Apollo, the Fire, Joe Shea, Ed White, Roger Chaffee, Gus Grissom, Borman, Lovell and Anders... all flashed, vanished, and gone within that fraction of second. A pragmatic to the very end, all he could do was to wrap his arms around his head, if only to minimize the force of the impact with that solid ground that rushed toward his eyes...
As he lost consciouness everything turned black
