All right, it's Tuesday again, and I think we all know what that means! Today, we're bringing you the first in a series of updates covering the unmanned side of space exploration, all of them provided by truth is life following extensive digging around on NTRS and other sources, and I think the results speak for themselves. Today's post is more of an overview, almost everything covered will get more fully developed in later updates.
Eyes Turned Skyward, Part II: Post #3
In many ways, the Vulkan Panic of 1982-1983 saved the planetary exploration program, which had been under siege since the day of President Reagan's inauguration. Having campaigned on a program of fiscal austerity (aside from the military), Reagan was eager to start cutting "useless" programs from the budget, putting NASA on the spot. While cutting human spaceflight altogether was never seriously contemplated, and many of NASA's programs had too much practical value (or too invested a support base) to be at risk of death, the planetary exploration program was an entirely different matter. Planetary exploration, after all, has never offered many practical benefits, and with only two probes under development (the Galileo Jupiter orbiter and the CR/CF, later Kirchoff, comet mission), both at JPL, there was no real institutional support base outside of JPL itself for continued planetary exploration. Add the division of the planetary science community against itself, unlike the equally unpractical astronomical community, and it was no surprise that planetary science would be first to the chopping block in the event of cuts. The first shot across the bow of JPL was fired just weeks after Reagan's inauguration, when the OMB proposed broad cuts in the planetary exploration program for the upcoming FY 1982 budget. These would include the termination of the Pioneer Venus and Pioneer Mars extended missions; the abandonment of the Voyager extended missions (particularly for Voyagers 1 and 2, which had completed their primary Jupiter-Saturn flyby missions); no new planetary exploration starts for at least several years; and, last but certainly not least, the cancellation of one of the three major planetary development programs then under way, or in other words Galileo, Kirchoff, or the US component of the International Solar Polar mission (since Europe would presumably continue to supply the other component), which would involve a flyby of Jupiter to provide the boost into a very highly inclined solar orbit.
Planetary scientists responded with outrage to the proposals, particularly those which would cut operations funding to ongoing missions. However, the unwillingness of their professional bodies (the American Astronomical Society and the Division for Planetary Sciences of that organization) to become involved in politics and the employment of many planetary scientists at Ames or JPL blunted this outrage, which was dismissed as simply self-interested lobbying. Far more serious was the response of the California Congressional delegation, as all current and proposed planetary exploration missions originated either from Ames or JPL, both located in California, and both major Californian employers. The cuts proposed by the OMB, and their suggestions of follow-on cuts in later fiscal years, would be nearly tantamount to shutting down JPL (Ames was also highly involved in aeronautical work, and therefore would have come out better), at least after the Galileo and Kirchoff missions were launched and had completed their primary missions, something that delegates from both parties could wholeheartedly oppose. Given that Reagan had once been governor of California, this perhaps had a larger effect on him than might otherwise be expected, but it still would not have been enough to preserve the planetary exploration program without the intervention of Carl Sagan. As head of the National Space Organization, the largest space advocacy group in the world, he had a unique platform among proponents of planetary exploration for making his voice heard, and with the recent success of his miniseries "Cosmos," his voice would be loud indeed. After a special plea from Sagan to members of the organization, Congress and the White House were flooded with letters, telephone calls, and even telegrams supporting the planetary exploration program. As it became obvious that Congress would most likely counter any proposed cuts to NASA, the OMB grudgingly backed off from the proposal, although internally it still saw NASA and planetary exploration as major cutting targets in the FY 1983 or FY 1984 budgets.
Perhaps Sagan could have countered these proposals as well, despite becoming increasingly distant from the NSO's day-to-day activities and the decay of the fame afforded by "Cosmos"; in the event, he never had to, as the launch of Vulkan and the subsequent Soviet descriptions of its capabilities and purpose (to build a space station and perhaps enable future human lunar exploration) rekindled many of the old fires of the Space Race for a new era. Suddenly, space was no longer a distant and practically unimportant realm that could be neglected at will; instead, it was a battleground, a place where the Free World and the Soviet Menace could square off, the former proving once again its technical superiority over the latter. The net effect of all of this rhetoric was the total reversal of previous positions about NASA's funding, with the OMB proposing instead a substantial increase over the FY 1982 budget in FY 1983 rather than a substantial decrease. In fact, the single-year increase in NASA's budget was nearly unprecedented, at an almost 35% jump in real dollars funding compared to the FY 1981 or FY 1982 budgets. While the majority of the money would go towards new human spaceflight programs, particularly the development of a new space station to replace the aging Spacelab, a portion would go towards expanded scientific programs, including planetary exploration. As part of this expansion, a new mission, VOIR (for Venus Orbiting Imaging Radar) was proposed for a start in the FY 1983 budget. By putting a radar into Venus orbit, VOIR would be able to create a high-resolution (and partially stereo) map of virtually the entire surface of the planet, while a series of modifications and downscopes since the original conception of the probe had reduced its costs and development time to something manageable for JPL. This time, the NASA budget passed smoothly; while Congress slightly cut back on the increase of funding to NASA, to about a 20% increase in real dollars funding, they approved of President Reagan's start on what was now known as Space Station Freedom and of the continuation of planetary exploration at least into the 1990s.
The FY 1983 budget set a trend that continued well into the 1980s. Every year, the Soviets would do something that seemed possibly somewhat threatening in space, and every year the US would respond by further increasing the NASA budget, usually with a new planetary mission start included in the budget line. For the FY 1984 budget, the CIA's estimate that the Soviets would conduct a manned lunar landing by the mid 1990s spurred the approval of the Lunar Reconnaissance Pioneer; for FY 1985, the success of Mars 10 and 11 led to the approval of the Mars Reconnaissance Pioneer and the Mars Traverse Rovers; for FY 1986, the ongoing construction of Mir, the big new Soviet space station, allowed starting the Cassini Saturn System Mission; and, finally, in FY 1987, the start of work on the European Piazzi probe and the Soviet “Grand Tour” caused approval of the Near Earth Asteroid Pioneer. After FY 1987, NASA's budget stopped increasing so rapidly, as the agency was becoming saturated in terms of its technical and managerial capabilities, but it still peaked in 1989 at $12.5 billion then-year dollars, the largest budget ever for NASA in the post-lunar era up to that point. However, while this flood of money undoubtedly contributed to extending the Golden Age of space exploration through the 1980s, it also served to conceal many deficiencies in the entire planetary exploration program which would perhaps have been more obvious and therefore more easily rectified in more austere circumstances.
It's a Charlie Stross story about a fictional effort called NAIL SPIKE which was trying to get Soviet scientists to kill themselves by leaking supposed top-secret rocket designs.
