T. A. Heppenheimer said:
This table included the four cases cited by Low in his memo to Myers of December 13, and reviewed by Myers. Case 1 was the OMB shuttle; Case 4 was the Shuttle NASA wanted and now apparently would not have. Following standard custom, the option Fletcher proposed was right in the middle as Case 2A. 11
Fletcher privately knew that he could go still lower. Talking with Low, he decided that they could accept something as small as 14 x 40 feet with 40,000 pounds. The two men then went to an afternoon meeting with White House and OMB officials: Shultz, Weinberger, Flanigan, David, Rice and Rose. Shultz was now the key man; he headed the OMB, he was Rice's boss, and he had Nixon's ear.
Shultz looked at NASA's presentation and decided that the only thing that made any sense, as NASA had said all along, would be the full-size version, Case 4. Shultz, however, did not press this point for Rice objected vigorously. Rice's staff was still active; only one day earlier, his economist John Sullivan had sent him a memo arguing anew that the most cost-effective system was still the Titan III. The meeting broke up with no decision. Fletcher and Low, however, came away fairly confident that they would at least get Case 2A, which they had recommended. Indeed, Shultz's support, however tentative, allowed them to hope that they might even win the full-capability Case 4.
Rice again prevailed, as he talked further with Weinberger. In a phone conversation with Fletcher, Weinberger stated that he wanted NASA to look at a 14 x 45-foot Shuttle-with 30,000 pounds of payload, only two-thirds that of Case 2A. In Low's words, "Fletcher came close to telling Weinberger to go to hell but restrained himself perhaps better than I could." Fletcher then phoned Shultz and talked with him at length. Shultz remained unwilling to make a decision, but recommended that NASA should take one more look at Rice's request.
Although Rice was holding firm on a weight of 30,000 pounds, he now was willing to budge slightly on payload size, for Sullivan's memo had discussed a 12 x 40-foot shuttle with twin solid boosters. Though this configuration would carry no more weight than a Titan III, it could fly with the boosters of a Titan III: 120-inch solid motors that were in production and had known costs. Such a Shuttle still would not match the cost-effectiveness of the Titan III itself, but it would come close. In Sullivan's own analysis, that [407] Titan would save only $100 million when compared to that Shuttle. Within the OMB, this was as near to an endorsement as any type of shuttle was likely to receive.
Low phoned Rice and asked him to put his questions in writing. Rice replied that he might have further questions subsequently, but he drew up a set of queries and sent it over to Low late on Friday evening, which was New Year's Eve. Low discussed them with Fletcher and Myers over the weekend; on Monday, January 3, they completed their response. A sampling will illustrate the exchanges: